"Defending itself in court would be expensive and unpleasant for Britain’s national broadcaster"
At this point it should be clear that not defending against the many specious, absurd and vexatious lawsuits Trump files costs more in the long run. The BBC can likely defend itself using government funds ; a use more legally sound than the DOJ's use of taxpayer money to persecute-though-prosecution the opposition to Trump.
Please, BBC: refuse to capitulate. We're all in this together.
The author of the anti-BBC piece is a pharmaceutical executive. Trump wants the NHS to pay more for drugs. He, Nigel Farage, and British MAGA want the BBC to adopt the supine, fearful treatment of Trump now dished out by U.S. legacy media—NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC—if not the adoring attitude of regime TV like Fox and Newsmax.
Trump, Brito and Americans, generally, should learn more about the meaning of the words "the freedom of speech" in the First Amendment. Much light was shed on the meaning of that idiomatic expression in 1964 in two unanimous SCOTUS decisions (New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964) and Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64 (1964)). The following is from Sullivan:
One vital reason for “the right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon” is that those particular powers were “deemed” (by the people who founded this nation and wrote and ratified our Constitution and our Bill of Rights) to be “the only effectual guardian of every” American “right.”
Even more vital and even more fundamental, our freedom of thought, expression, communication, association and assembly truly flow from our sovereignty. So in our “Republican Government,” the “censorial power is” necessarily generally “in the people over the Government, and not in the Government over the people.”
Our “Constitution created a [republican] form of government under which ‘The people, not the government, possess the absolute sovereignty.’ [Our Constitution] dispersed power” in many ways precisely because “of the people’s” extreme “distrust of concentrated power, and of power itself at levels.”
"The protection of the public requires” both “discussion” and “information” about official conduct and misconduct. The opposite view merely “reflect[s] the obsolete [seditious libel] doctrine that the governed must not criticize their governors.” “The interest of the public" in the truth about purported public servants “outweighs the interest” of “any [offended] individual." Even the Sedition Act of 1798 expressly permitted bringing federal officials “into contempt or disrepute” or “excit[ing] against them” the “hatred” of the “people” unless such criticism was proved to be both “false” and “malicious.”
Such speech “should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open,” and it may “include vehement, caustic,” and “unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” In Garrison, SCOTUS emphasized that such “speech concerning public affairs” is “the essence of self-government” (the essence of American government).
In Garrison, SCOTUS also emphasized that the “public interest in a free flow of information to the people concerning public officials, their servants” is “paramount,” so “anything which” even “might touch on an official’s fitness for office is relevant” and protected, including any purported public servants' “dishonesty, malfeasance, or improper motivation.”
“Truth may not be the subject of” any type of content-based “sanctions” “where discussion of public affairs is concerned,” so “only” BBC “statements” proved “false” may be punished with “either civil or criminal sanctions.” Our Constitution “absolutely prohibits” any content-based “punishment of truthful criticism” of any public servant’s public service.
The bottom line is that the BBC did not misrepresent Trump's words. The BBC showed what Trump actually said and the BBC highlighted what Trump's supporters actually heard, what was actually in their heads when they headed for the Capitol purportedly to "stop the steal" (stop the counting of electors' ballots by Vice President Pence and Speaker Pelosi).
I just want him to go away…😔
Mr Thin Skin at it again
"Defending itself in court would be expensive and unpleasant for Britain’s national broadcaster"
At this point it should be clear that not defending against the many specious, absurd and vexatious lawsuits Trump files costs more in the long run. The BBC can likely defend itself using government funds ; a use more legally sound than the DOJ's use of taxpayer money to persecute-though-prosecution the opposition to Trump.
Please, BBC: refuse to capitulate. We're all in this together.
The author of the anti-BBC piece is a pharmaceutical executive. Trump wants the NHS to pay more for drugs. He, Nigel Farage, and British MAGA want the BBC to adopt the supine, fearful treatment of Trump now dished out by U.S. legacy media—NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC—if not the adoring attitude of regime TV like Fox and Newsmax.
I watched the Hunter Biden interview posted at the end of your essay. He was coherent, cogent and accurate. I hope the BBC responds the same way.
It is not physically possible to defame Trump!
Trump, Brito and Americans, generally, should learn more about the meaning of the words "the freedom of speech" in the First Amendment. Much light was shed on the meaning of that idiomatic expression in 1964 in two unanimous SCOTUS decisions (New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964) and Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64 (1964)). The following is from Sullivan:
One vital reason for “the right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon” is that those particular powers were “deemed” (by the people who founded this nation and wrote and ratified our Constitution and our Bill of Rights) to be “the only effectual guardian of every” American “right.”
Even more vital and even more fundamental, our freedom of thought, expression, communication, association and assembly truly flow from our sovereignty. So in our “Republican Government,” the “censorial power is” necessarily generally “in the people over the Government, and not in the Government over the people.”
Our “Constitution created a [republican] form of government under which ‘The people, not the government, possess the absolute sovereignty.’ [Our Constitution] dispersed power” in many ways precisely because “of the people’s” extreme “distrust of concentrated power, and of power itself at levels.”
"The protection of the public requires” both “discussion” and “information” about official conduct and misconduct. The opposite view merely “reflect[s] the obsolete [seditious libel] doctrine that the governed must not criticize their governors.” “The interest of the public" in the truth about purported public servants “outweighs the interest” of “any [offended] individual." Even the Sedition Act of 1798 expressly permitted bringing federal officials “into contempt or disrepute” or “excit[ing] against them” the “hatred” of the “people” unless such criticism was proved to be both “false” and “malicious.”
Such speech “should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open,” and it may “include vehement, caustic,” and “unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” In Garrison, SCOTUS emphasized that such “speech concerning public affairs” is “the essence of self-government” (the essence of American government).
In Garrison, SCOTUS also emphasized that the “public interest in a free flow of information to the people concerning public officials, their servants” is “paramount,” so “anything which” even “might touch on an official’s fitness for office is relevant” and protected, including any purported public servants' “dishonesty, malfeasance, or improper motivation.”
“Truth may not be the subject of” any type of content-based “sanctions” “where discussion of public affairs is concerned,” so “only” BBC “statements” proved “false” may be punished with “either civil or criminal sanctions.” Our Constitution “absolutely prohibits” any content-based “punishment of truthful criticism” of any public servant’s public service.
The bottom line is that the BBC did not misrepresent Trump's words. The BBC showed what Trump actually said and the BBC highlighted what Trump's supporters actually heard, what was actually in their heads when they headed for the Capitol purportedly to "stop the steal" (stop the counting of electors' ballots by Vice President Pence and Speaker Pelosi).