Connect with us

News

Trump’s BBC lawsuit: A botched report, BritBox, and porn

Published

on

Trump’s BBC lawsuit: A botched report, BritBox, and porn

Journalists report outside BBC Broadcasting House in London. In a new lawsuit, President Trump is seeking $10 billion from the BBC for defamation.

Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP/AP


hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP/AP

Not content with an apology and the resignation of two top BBC executives, President Trump filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit Monday against the BBC in his continued strategy to take the press to court.

Beyond the legal attack on yet another media outlet, the litigation represents an audacious move against a national institution of a trusted ally. It hinges on an edit presented in a documentary of the president’s words on a fateful day. Oddly enough, it also hinges on the appeal of a niche streaming service to people in Florida, and the use of a technological innovation embraced by porn devotees.

A sloppy edit

At the heart of Trump’s case stands an episode of the BBC television documentary program Panorama that compresses comments Trump made to his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, before they laid siege to the U.S. Capitol.

Advertisement

The episode seamlessly links Trump’s call for people to walk up to the Capitol with his exhortation nearly 55 minutes later: “And we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell you don’t have a country anymore.”

Trump’s attorneys argue that the presentation gives viewers the impression that the president incited the violence that followed. They said his remarks had been doctored, not edited, and noted the omission of his statement that protesters would be “marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

As NPR and other news organizations have documented, many defendants in the Jan. 6 attack on Congress said they believed they had been explicitly urged by Trump to block the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

Trump’s lawsuit calls the documentary “a false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump.”

The lawsuit alleges that the depiction was “fabricated” and aired “in a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the Election to President Trump’s detriment.”

Advertisement

While the BBC has not filed a formal response to the lawsuit, the public broadcaster has reiterated that it will defend itself in court.

A Nov. 13 letter to Trump’s legal team on behalf of the BBC from Charles Tobin, a leading U.S. First Amendment attorney, argued that the broadcaster has demonstrated contrition by apologizing, withdrawing the broadcast, and accepting the executives’ resignations.

Tobin also noted, on behalf of the BBC, that Trump had already been indicted by a grand jury on four criminal counts stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including his conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, on the Capitol grounds.

The appeal of BritBox

For all the current consternation about the documentary, it didn’t get much attention at the time. The BBC aired the documentary twice on the eve of the 2024 elections — but never broadcast it directly in Florida.

That matters because the lawsuit was filed in Florida, where Trump alleges that the program was intended to discourage voters from voting for him.

Advertisement

Yet Tobin notes, Trump won Florida in 2024 by a “commanding 13-point margin, improving over his 2020 and 2016 performances in the state.”

Trump failed to make the case that Floridians were influenced by the documentary, Tobin wrote. He said the BBC did not broadcast the program in Florida through U.S. channels. (The BBC has distribution deals with PBS and NPR and their member stations for television and radio programs, respectively, but not to air Panorama.)

It was “geographically restricted” to U.K. viewers, Tobin wrote.

Hence the argument in Trump’s lawsuit that American viewers have other ways to watch it. The first is BritBox, a BBC streaming service that draws more on British mysteries set at seaside locales than BBC coverage of American politics.

Back in March, then-BBC Director General Tim Davie testified before the House of Commons that BritBox had more than 4 million subscribers in the U.S. (The BBC did not break down how many subscribers it has in Florida or how often Panorama documentaries are viewed by subscribers in the U.S. or the state, in response to questions posed by NPR for this story.)

Advertisement

“The Panorama Documentary was available to BritBox subscribers in Florida and was in fact viewed by these subscribers through BritBox and other means provided by the BBC,” Trump’s lawsuit states.

NPR searched for Panorama documentaries on the BritBox streaming service through the Amazon Prime platform, one of its primary distributors. The sole available episode dates from 2000. Trump does not mention podcasts. Panorama is streamed on BBC Sounds. Its episodes do not appear to be available in the U.S. on such mainstream podcast distributors in the U.S. such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Pocket Casts, according to a review by NPR.

Software that enables anonymous browsing – of porn

Another way Trump’s lawsuit suggests people in the U.S. could watch that particular episode of Panorama, if they were so inclined, is through a Virtual Private Network, or VPN.

Trump’s suit says millions of Florida citizens use VPNs to view content from foreign streamers that would otherwise be restricted. And the BBC iPlayer is among the most popular streaming services accessed by viewers using a VPN, Trump’s lawsuit asserts.

In response to questions from NPR, the BBC declined to break down figures for how many people in the U.S. access the BBC iPlayer through VPNs.

Advertisement

Demand for such software did shoot up in 2024 and early 2025. Yet, according to analysts — and even to materials cited by the president’s team in his own case — the reason appears to have less to do with foreign television shows and more to do with online pornography.

Under a new law, Florida began requiring age verification checks for visitors to pornographic websites, notes Paul Bischoff, editor of Comparitech, a site that reviews personal cybersecurity software.

“People use VPNs to get around those age verification and site blocks,” Bischoff says. “The reason is obvious.”

An article in the Tampa Free Press cited by Trump’s lawsuit to help propel the idea of a sharp growth of interest in the BBC actually undercuts the idea in its very first sentence – by focusing on that law.

“Demand for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) has skyrocketed in Florida following the implementation of a new law requiring age verification for access to adult websites,” the first paragraph states. “This dramatic increase reflects a widespread effort by Floridians to bypass the restrictions and access adult content.”

Advertisement

Several legal observers anticipate possible settlement

Several First Amendment attorneys tell NPR they believe Trump’s lawsuit will result in a settlement of some kind, in part because there’s new precedent. In the past year, the parent companies of ABC News and CBS News have each paid $16 million to settle cases filed by Trump that many legal observers considered specious.

“The facts benefit Trump and defendants may be concerned about reputational harm,” says Carl Tobias, a professor of law at the University of Richmond who specializes in free speech issues. “The BBC also has admitted it could have done better and essentially apologized.”

Some of Trump’s previous lawsuits against the media have failed. He is currently also suing the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Des Moines Register and its former pollster, and the board of the Pulitzer Prize.

News

Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

Published

on

Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

Advertisement

City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

Advertisement

Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

Advertisement

Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

Advertisement

“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

@fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

Advertisement

Advertisement

Image from @fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

Advertisement

Image from @Bogs4NY via X

Advertisement

The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

Advertisement

Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

Advertisement

Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

News

DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

Published

on

DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

The Justice Department sent letters warning election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that they could face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.

The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”

Advertisement

“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections is extremely rare, but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are among those who said they received the letters from the Justice Department.

The letters say state election officers “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” noncitizen voting. They further specify that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a statewide voting registration list or who facilitates noncitizens’ receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.

“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation” of federal law, the letters said.

Advertisement

Henderson wrote on social media that the threats constitute “truly bizarre behavior.”

“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.”

The letters are the latest move in the Justice Department’s campaign to assert more federal control over state elections.

While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

News

Reigning champion Argentina escapes with remarkable World Cup victory over Egypt

Published

on

Reigning champion Argentina escapes with remarkable World Cup victory over Egypt

Lionel Messi #10 of Argentina celebrates scoring his team’s second goal during their World Cup match against Egypt in Atlanta on Tuesday.

Elsa/Getty Images


hide caption



toggle caption

Advertisement

Elsa/Getty Images

They looked beaten. And out. Argentina, the defending World Cup champion and No. 1-ranked team, was down 2-0 late against Egypt.

Then, in a span of 13 remarkable minutes, Argentina scored not once, not twice, but three times, capping a comeback for the ages and leaving Egypt stunned and shellshocked.

For much of the game in Atlanta, Egypt was in control, hobbling Argentina early. The Egyptian attack began almost immediately with a stunning header goal delivered by Yasser Ibrahim in the 15th minute. After that, Egypt’s defense closed ranks, making it practically impossible for Argentina to equalize.

Advertisement

It was downhill from there for the Argentines: team captain Lionel Messi failed to convert a penalty kick, and in the 67th minute, Egypt got a second goal from Mostafa Ziko (after an earlier Egyptian goal had been disallowed after a video review). It looked like Argentina was finished. On the brink of elimination.

But no one told the Argentine players that.

In the 79th minute, Lionel Messi began doing his thing. He fired a cross near the Egyptian goal, and Cristian Romero headed it in. Messi was not done. Four minutes later, he powered a shot past the Egyptian keeper. It was his eighth goal of this tournament, the most of any player. The score was 2-2.

Then, in stoppage time, yet another Argentina header and another goal, this time from Enzo Fernandez.

“This is the World Cup for you,” said Messi after the game. “It wasn’t easy to come back from two goals down. But as I always say, this group never gives up. We always try to fight until the end.”

Advertisement
French referee François Letexier speaks with Egypt forward Mohamed Salah during the World Cup Round of 16 match between Argentina and Egypt in Atlanta.

French referee François Letexier speaks with Egypt forward Mohamed Salah during the World Cup Round of 16 match between Argentina and Egypt in Atlanta.

Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images


hide caption



toggle caption

Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images

Advertisement

Afterward, Egypt coach Hossam Hassan complained about the French referee and the officiating. “I am not convinced. I am not convinced with this outcome. I’m not convinced with the way things unfolded during this match,” said Hassan in a post-match news conference. “We have been treated unfairly today. We have suffered injustice.”

“We would have deserved to earn this win, but we are leaving with honor, with pride, regardless of this defeat,” said Hossan.

African soccer teams have been the stars of this World Cup. Morocco has yet to lose a game. Cape Verde qualified for the first time in its history and stymied Spain, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia. Argentina barely beat them in a nail-biter of a match.

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending