James Ivens, Socialist Party National Committee
Donald Trump is threatening to sue the BBC for up to $5 billion. Its director-general and head of news have fallen on their swords. What does it all mean?
An October 2024 Panorama episode ran footage of Trump’s speech after losing the 2020 election, spliced in a way that some argue suggests he openly supported the abortive 6 January 2021 putsch. It’s widely accepted that he whipped up the rioters who entered Congress, and didn’t call them off. One of his first acts on regaining the presidency was to pardon them.
However, a leaked memo from former BBC editorial advisor Michael Prescott has been manufactured into a storm. In effect, it criticised that documentary and coverage of the 2024 US elections, the onslaught on Palestine, and attacks on transgender rights, as insufficiently right wing.
Prescott is a lobbyist for Trump-allied US tech giant Oracle and former political editor of the Times, reportedly hired at the suggestion of Sir Robbie Gibb. Gibb is a former Tory press director appointed to the governing BBC Board by Boris Johnson.
The big picture here is that the whole capitalist system is deteriorating and has no solutions for the majority. Political polarisation as people search for alternatives is happening everywhere. Inevitably, that hits institutions whose job is defending any aspect of the system.
Despite repeated obituaries of ‘legacy media’, Trump’s multibillion-dollar legal threat shows that it still holds enormous importance to the boss class in trying to influence the bounds of public debate. When times are good, disputes over media influence between competing capitalists and their political trends carry on fairly politely.
Gibb, Prescott and the memo furore are expressions of today’s more naked attempts at factional control. Reports say Gibb intervenes openly in editorial decisions, contrary to convention, and last year was heard saying he would “blow the place up” if that strategy failed.
That’s Trump’s game too. Media solicitor Mark Stephens commented that “filing a lawsuit is easy. Winning one is, in this case, like trying to lasso a tornado”. This isn’t about winning in court. It’s about disciplining capitalist media opponents.
Different court deadlines for claiming mean Trump can’t sue in Britain but could in Florida. The law says he’d have to show that – within that jurisdiction – the BBC caused him real harm.
Not only did the documentary never air in the US, but it came after years of condemnation by rivals in the courts, Congress, and domestic and global media. Trump won in 2024 despite all that. If anything, attacks on certain issues – from within the same capitalist establishment, still presiding over attacks on the working class – helped burnish his false anti-establishment image.
Working-class anger
But today, outside of stock market magnates, Trump’s approval ratings have plummeted to their lowest point since re-election. Top complaints are the very cost-of-living issues he’d appealed to working-class voters on – and on which 100,000 campaigners just helped left Democrat Zohran Mamdani win the New York mayoralty.
Add to that a record-breaking federal government shutdown and rising media discussion of Trump’s possible implication in Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking. Midterm elections are less than a year off.
Pre-trial proceedings, even for flimsy claims, are drawn-out and exorbitant. Trump has sued multiple US media outlets; lately, many have settled out of court to cut their losses. Either way, the message to media bosses is: can you afford to undermine me right now?
Neither the ‘impartial’ capitalist media nor the ‘disinterested’ capitalist courts can beat Trumpism. Steps towards a mass, working-class political force, fighting for an alternative, socialist system, are the way out.
