CPJ: Trump’s BBC lawsuit is yet another attack on US media freedom 

Washington, D.C., December 17, 2025— The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against British public broadcaster, the BBC, and calls on the president to stop engaging the media in lawsuits that appear to challenge the fundamentals of the First Amendment.

“The president’s lawsuits against the BBC and other news outlets undercut the First Amendment values he claims to uphold and creates an environment where journalists and newsrooms are forced to self-censor in order to ward off potentially costly legal retribution,” said CPJ’s U.S., Canada, and Caribbean Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “It is disgraceful that a sitting U.S. president would spend a portion of his tenure suing media companies. This sends a chilling message to journalists and creates a framework in which world leaders, as well as local officials in the U.S., could feel empowered to emulate this behavior.”

Trump’s legal team filed the suit in the U.S. Southern District of Florida on Monday, seeking $5 billion in damages for defamation in connection with the editing of a speech Trump gave on January 6, 2021, as well as $5 billion for unfair trade practices. The lawsuit accuses the BBC of attempting to “interfere in and influence” the 2024 U.S. presidential election, by editing the speech.

The BBC in November apologized for the editing of Trump’s speech, which appeared on an episode of the Panorama program, and said that it would not rerun the October 28, 2024 episode.

According to a July analysis from Axios, Trump and his businesses have been involved in 34 media or defamation lawsuits since 2015. 

In a report about the Trump administration’s first 100 days, CPJ documented the harmful impact of these lawsuits and the ways in which these and other actions have normalized disdain for the media in an alarming way. 

The Telegraph, a British newspaper, published a leaked internal memo from the BBC in which the Panorama show’s edit was criticized; this story prompted the resignation of BBC general director Tim Davie and the outlet’s head of news, Deborah Turness.

CPJ’s email to White House communications director Steven Cheung did not receive an immediate reply.