ROSA PRINCE: Brits love to stand up to bullies, but Donald Trump’s lawsuit could bury the BBC

Were the situation not so serious it would be tempting to urge the BBC to take the fight to Donald Trump. The US President is threatening to sue the British public broadcaster for up to $7.5 billion for a clumsily edited documentary that made it appear he directly incited the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

The case is overblown, and Trump’s graceless, grasping threat is yet another White House assault on press freedom, this time targeting the publicly funded, internationally renowned and sometimes beloved national broadcaster of a foreign state. The BBC has apologised for the misleading edit but insists it will contest any lawsuit. It’s a show of bravado that fits its self-conception as an institution unafraid to speak truth to power. After all, standing up to bullies has long been part of plucky Britain’s own self-mythologising.

Unfortunately, viewing the Trump imbroglio through this misty-eyed lens ignores the depth of the mess the BBC has got itself into, a lapse that’s potentially existential. Even though the President is furiously milking the BBC’s blunder for all its worth, he’s not in the wrong here.

The Beeb is too important, and Trump’s rancour too extreme and unpredictable, to pursue chancy legal warfare. By taking him on, the corporation could be gambling with its own destruction. And in fractious times, the need for institutions that speak to the whole country is greater than ever. Far better to lean on the UK’s vaunted soft power — and Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s seemingly warm relations with Trump — and sue for peace.

BBC lawyers will have told its senior leaders they have a good case. The Panorama show that aired the clip wasn’t available in the US. And it would be hard for Trump to argue he suffered irreparable harm, given that he went on to win the 2024 election weeks after the broadcast. The Beeb is relying on a presumption in US law that public figures are more open to criticism than ordinary mortals when seeking to prove defamation, and will claim there was no suggestion of “malice” in the edit, which it will insist was done for brevity not bias.

That last point could fatally undermine the BBC’s argument. Because whatever lawyers might say, Trump’s superpower is political, not legal, and it’s easy to point to an anti-Trump motive in splicing his quotes. The BBC is on shaky ground after admitting some of the other recent allegations of bias against it have merit. Trump’s many acolytes in the UK’s noisy right-wing media ecosystem will happily provide him with other attack points, particularly over Gaza, trans rights and the environment.

In today’s “anti-woke” backlash, Trump will have a cacophonous British mob behind him for as long as he wants. With the Beeb already battling to persuade politicians that it still deserves its spot in a media landscape dominated by Netflix and its ilk, the timing of this standoff couldn’t be worse.

Nor does the BBC have the finances to duke it out with the president. Rupert Murdoch’s deep pockets have let the Wall Street Journal stand firm in its own Trump skirmishes, and the tycoon’s ownership of Fox News helps him navigate any MAGA backlash. The BBC’s privately owned US counterparts ABC and CBS caved into threats from Trump, handing over millions to keep him sweet.

The BBC doesn’t have tens of millions of pounds spare to pay off a wrathful President. Its unique funding model, where UK citizens stump up a monthly stipend of £29.10 ($58) for the first half a year and £14.54 ($29.50) thereafter, then has to cover a vast range of services running from kids’ TV to radio gardening shows, and from long-running soap operas to classical-music channels. A settlement of even a fraction of the $7.5 billion mooted by Trump could be catastrophic.

And for all that lawyers might insist on the BBC’s strong case, I’m not sure they should be so confident. So long as Trump can make a reasonable claim that malice was involved — and why not, given the BBC apology? — he’d get a hearing. That would hand him a starring role in an old US movie staple: The haughty Brit being cut down to size. Trump has said a lawsuit would “probably” be filed “someplace in the US”. While probably is a long way from definitely, if this did ever end up in front of a Florida jury, all bets would be off.

One off-ramp is for Starmer to persuade the President to back away. He can point out that BBC heads have rolled. Director general Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness resigned last week. And Starmer could commit to helping the corporation introduce the structures, procedures and personnel to combat bias.

For now, Downing Street insists the Beeb is standing alone, that it is independent from government and the PM cannot get involved. That’s baloney. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said last week that she’s speaking to the BBC leadership every day as it navigates this scandal. The government oversees its charter and licence-fee model and represents its customers. Beset by crisis, this is one arena in which Starmer could actually score a win. Saving the BBC from itself would be an admirable legacy.

And if it sticks in the craw of some BBC stalwarts not to face off against a President with autocratic tendencies who pardoned that same mob responsible for the January 6 violence, they must remember this crisis is of their own making. The BBC doesn’t embody Winston Churchill or brave British soldiers fighting fascism in World War II; it’s a bloated organisation that failed to accept its sloppiness and bias until the opportunist President called their bluff. Arrogance and defensiveness got it into this mess. Let’s hope Starmer can drag it out.

Rosa Prince is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering UK politics and policy. She was formerly an editor and writer at Politico and the Daily Telegraph, and is the author of “Comrade Corbyn” and “Theresa May: The Enigmatic Prime Minister.”