Donald Trump:“The BBC intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers...”

President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the BBC, seeking $10 billion in damages. In a submission to the US District Court in the Southern District of Florida filed yesterday, Trump’s legal team argue that “the BBC intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers around the world”.

Trump had previously threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion, after it broadcast an episode of its long-running documentary series Panorama that edited one of his speeches in a misleading way. Last month, a letter from Trump’s lawyer accused the BBC of making “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements” in the programme.

The Panorama episode, Trump: A Second Chance?, featured an extract from a speech Trump gave on the morning of 6th January 2021, the day of the attempted insurrection by Trump supporters at the US Capitol building in Washington. At an early point in the speech, Trump said: “we’re gonna walk down, and I’ll be there with you... We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re gonna cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.” The speech continued for almost an hour, and in the final passages Trump’s tone became more combative: “And we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”

However, Panorama edited three soundbites from the speech together seemlessly, making Trump appear to say: “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, / and I’ll be there with you / And we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.” This went beyond the usual editing for brevity and clarity, as it changed the sequence of his words and spliced together lines that were delivered almost an hour apart. But it did not fundamentally alter the meaning of Trump’s speech, as he was impeached for inciting violence at the Capitol.

The episode was broadcast in the UK twice last year: on BBC1 on 28th October, and repeated on BBC2 on 2nd November. But it was not broadcast or streamed by any of the BBC’s American TV services. It was available via the BBC iPlayer for a year after its first broadcast, though that service is geoblocked outside the UK.

To prove to a Flordia court that he was defamed by Panorama, Trump must first establish that the programme was viewed by Floridians. His lawsuit makes the rather weak argument that, due to the increased usage of VPN software, there is an “immense likelihood that citizens of Florida accessed the Documentary”, though there is no evidence that anyone in the state actually watched it. Regardless, the BBC certainly takes reasonable measures to ensure that the iPlayer is not accessible outside the UK.

The lawsuit describes Panorama’s editing of Trump’s speech as “an intentional and malicious effort to falsely and deceptively portray President Trump as having called for violent action”. The BBC has already issued a public apology, saying on 13th November that the edit “gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”. The key distinction here is between “intentional” and “mistaken”, as US defamation law requires evidence of deliberate intent to mislead. But the Panorama episode featured extensive interviews with Trump supporters, and was by no means the hatchet job that the lawsuit describes.

Trump is seeking $5 billion in damages for defamation, and an additional $5 billion for alleged violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. (The FDUTPA is a consumer protection law, and seems to have no relevance to the Panorama episode.) The lawsuit ends by requesting a jury trial, which may be the most significant aspect of the filing: a jury in Florida — a Republican state — would likely be dominated by Trump voters, which might therefore influence the verdict.

This is the third time that Trump has personally taken legal action against a news organisation during his second term. The first occasion was earlier this year, when he sued The Wall Street Journal, claiming that a letter he wrote to Jeffrey Epstein didn’t exist. (Since the WSJ lawsuit was filed, the letter has been published, and Trump continues to deny that he wrote it, even though it’s clearly signed by him.) He also filed a lawsuit against The New York Times and the authors of Lucky Loser.

Trump has sued numerous other media figures and news organisations over the years, including Bill Maher and CNN. He sued Bob Woodward for copyright infringement, though that case was dismissed. His lawsuit against E. Jean Carroll was also dismissed. His unsuccessful lawsuit against Timothy L. O’Brien’s book TrumpNation sought $5 billion in damages.

Trump has never won a libel case in court, though he has received settlements in two cases. ABC settled after he sued them last year. CBS also agreed to an out-of-court settlement earlier this year after he sued them in 2024.

Occasionally, Trump has filed defamation suits indirectly via his organisations or relatives. His brother sued their niece, Mary Trump, in 2020, though the case was dismissed. A suit filed against the NYT by his presidential campaign also failed. His wife won undisclosed damages from The Daily Telegraph in 2019, and she was awarded $3 million in damages from the Daily Mail in 2017.

Two of the BBC’s most senior executives, Director-General Tim Davie and head of BBC News Deborah Turness, both resigned over the fallout from Panorama’s Trump episode, making Davie the third BBC director-general to resign over a controversial programme. Greg Dyke quit alongside BBC chairman Gavin Davies in 2004, following the suicide of David Kelly, who had been the source for a Radio 4 report about the government allegedly ‘sexing up’ a dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. George Entwistle resigned in 2012 after Newsnight falsely accused Alistair McAlpine of child abuse.

Birth of Golden Snail

Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s Birth of Golden Snail (กำเนิดหอยทากทอง) was shown on 13th December at the Thai Paper Mill in Kanchanaburi, as part of the Big River Asia Lab Meeting organised by Rolling Wild. The event ran from 10th to 15th December.

Birth of Golden Snail was banned from the Thailand Biennale in 2018, and had its first public screening at the following year’s 30th Singapore International Film Festival. Its Thai premiere was at the 23rd Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 23), and it was shown last year at Infringes.

It has also been shown as part of The Golden Snail Series (วัฒนธรรม​หอยทากทอง), a programme of Chulayarnnon’s short films, at Bangkok University, ภาพสุดท้ายบนผืนผ้า (‘the final images on cloth’), and in Hat Yai and Songkla. Chulayarnnon discussed Birth of Golden Snail in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored.

Isan Odyssey

Thunska Pansittivorakul’s documentary Isan Odyssey (อีสานอำพราง) will be shown on 20th December at Book Bird in Kanchanaburi. The screening is part of Isan / Sound Residency (อีสาน / ซาวด์ เรสซิเดนซี่), the third Analog Live event, and will be followed by a discussion with Thunska titled สัญญะของการเดินทางแห่งเสียง (‘the symbolism of the sound journey’).

Phassarawin Kulsomboon, Isan Odyssey’s cinematographer, previously directed Khon Boys (เด็กโขน), a documentary about a troupe of young khon dancers, and Isan Odyssey begins in a similar vein, following a troupe of young mor lam performers. Just as Khon Boys covers the historical restrictions imposed on khon performances, Isan Odyssey links the past suppression of mor lam to the political history of Thailand.

Isan Odyssey highlights the origins of mor lam as a form of political expression in the Isan region. Modern mor lam, in contrast, is primarily a commercial entertainment: “Gone are the days of ideology and fighting against state injustice.”

The veteran leader of the mor lam troupe recalls his youth in the 1960s, when he heard shots fired from helicopters, the sound of “Thai soldiers shooting communists”. This provides a segue to the film’s central theme: the state’s anti-communist campaign in various Isan provinces during the Cold War.

A voiceover describes how suspected communists were “brutally murdered” during Sarit Thanarat’s regime, and how this “ruthless suppression” continued during the Thanom Kittikachorn era. An elderly resident of the village of Nabua describes the situation at that time as “suffocatingly brutal.”

Similarly, Apichatpong Weerasethakul has made several films in and around Nabua, whose inhabitants were among the first victims of the anti-communist purge. In Apichatpong’s short film A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (จดหมายถงลงบญม), a narrator recalls the area’s past: “Soldiers once occupied this place. They killed and tortured the villagers and forced them to flee to the jungle.”

Isan Odyssey touches on three specific historical incidents, though only briefly. It includes 16mm newsreel footage from 14th October 1973, and a few photographs from 6th October 1976. A young photographer describes the military crackdown in May 2010, and a caption informs us that this resulted in 108 casualties. This grim statistic was a bone of contention in Nontawat Numbenchapol’s documentary Boundary (ฟ้าต่ำแผ่นดินสูง), which was briefly banned in part because it claimed that around 100 people had died.

One of Thunska’s films, This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน), was also banned. As a result, he told me in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored: “I decided not to show any of my films in Thailand.” Working with German producer Jürgen Brüning, he made nine films — The Terrorists (ผู้ก่อการร้าย), Supernatural (เหนือธรรมชาติ), sPACEtIME (กาล-อวกาศ), Reincarnate (จุติ), Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล), Santikhiri Sonata (สันติคีรี โซนาตา), Avalon (แดนศักดิ์สิทธิ์), Danse Macabre (มรณสติ), and Damnatio Memoriae (ไม่พึงปรารถนา) — all of which featured sexually explicit and politically sensitive content, and none of which had theatrical releases in Thailand.

Isan Odyssey is an exception: it was produced by Documentary Club in Thailand, rather than by Brüning in Germany, and it was the opening film of the What the Doc! (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์ สารคดีนานาชาติ แห่งประเทศไทย) film festival. As in Thunska’s other work, Isan Odyssey directly criticises the Thai state, though it avoids the graphic imagery of his earlier films, hence its ‘15’ rating from the Thai film censorship board.

Hits Me Movies 3

As the end of the year approaches, there’s an opportunity to catch up on the films you may have missed — or rewatch the films you loved — at House Samyan in Bangkok. The cinema is bringing back its most popular films of the year, in its third annual Hits Me Movies season, from 18th December until New Year’s Day. The standout this year is A Useful Ghost (ผีใช้ได้ค่ะ), the absurdist satire from Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke in which domestic appliances are possessed by the restless spirits of the dead, screening on 19th and 23rd December.

First Light

Chaweng Chaiyawan’s short film Please... See Us (หว่างีมอละ) will be shown today at Me Goody Space in Bangkok as part of the venue’s First Light screening programme. Please... See Us is a powerful and transgressive film, and ends with an extended sequence in which a pig is killed and dismembered, the helpless animal being a tragic metaphor for the plight of ethnic minorities in Thailand.

The film was shown at Chiang Mai University and Maejo University last year, and at a Chaweng retrospective in Phattalung. It had an outdoor screening in Chiang Mai in 2023. It has been screened twice at Doc Club and Pub in Bangkok, in 2021 and 2023. It was shown in Phayao as part of Wildtype 2021, and in Salaya at the 25th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 25).

Swastika Eyes

The Scottish band Primal Scream have been reported to the Metropolitan Police following a gig at the Roundhouse in London on 8th December. Their live performance of Swastika Eyes included a video backdrop featuring a swastika inside a Star of David, and the two combined symbols were positioned over the eyes of politicians including Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

In a statement posted on their Instagram account yesterday, the band defended the video: “It is meant to provoke debate, not hate.” The Community Security Trust, which made a complaint to the Met yesterday, also issued a statement: “Entwining a Star of David with a swastika implies that Jews are Nazis and risks encouraging hatred of Jews. There needs to be an urgent investigation by the venue and the promoter about how this happened, and we have reported this to the police.”

Three-finger Protests: 2020–2021

In the days following the 22nd May 2014 coup, demonstrations at Victory Monument in Bangkok were initially tolerated by the junta, though by June of that year, police were being stationed at likely venues to pre-empt any potential protests. Opponents of the coup turned to symbolic acts such as the three-finger salute from the Hunger Games film series, briefly disrupting a speech by coup leader Prayut Chan-o-cha on 19th November 2014.

The protest movement was revived in February 2020, with ‘flash mob’ demonstrations on university campuses following the Constitutional Court’s dissolution of the Future Forward party. Future Forward’s progressive policy platform had received overwhelming support from younger Thais eager for structural change, and the party’s abolition was seen as a return to the status quo.

The first mass protests took place on 18th July and 16th August 2020, when more than 10,000 people attended rallies at Democracy Monument organised by Free Youth. Lawyer Arnon Nampa led a smaller protest there on 3rd August 2020 (the so-called Harry Potter rally). A week later, at a Thammasat University protest organised by United Front of Thammasat and Demonstration, student Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul read out a ten-point manifesto calling for greater oversight of the monarchy.

The movement increased in popularity and momentum, and tens of thousands of people attended an overnight rally at Thammasat on 19th September 2020. On 14th October 2020, protesters marched from Democracy Monument to Government House, and the government declared a state of emergency in Bangkok.

Protesters regrouped at Ratchaprasong on 16th October 2020, and riot police used water cannon to disperse them. Further mass rallies were held later that week, including at Victory Monument on 18th and 19th October 2020. Water cannon was used again on 8th November 2020, when protesters marched from Democracy Monument to the Grand Palace.

Tensions increased on 17th November 2020, when riot police used water cannon laced with tear gas to prevent protesters from entering parliament. The demonstrators breached the barricades, and were met by a royalist counter-protest. Gunshots were fired, and projectiles were thrown by both sides. More violence occurred a week later when a ping-pong bomb was thrown at protesters outside the Siam Commercial Bank headquarters.

Free Youth rebranded as REDEM (Restart Democracy), and organised a march from Victory Monument to the Viphavadi Rangsit Road military barracks on 28th February 2021. Protesters threw rocks and other projectiles at the police, who deployed tear gas and water cannon against them. The police also fired rubber bullets, in a significant escalation. There were injuries on both sides, and a police officer suffered a fatal heart attack.

Rubber bullets were also used to disperse protesters at Sanam Luang on 20th March 2021, outside Bangkok’s Criminal Court on 2nd May 2021, and at Democracy Monument on 18th July 2021. In August 2021, there were almost daily clashes near Viphavadi Road between between riot police and the radical Thalufah protest group, with rubber bullets being fired on 7th, 10th, 11th, 13th, 15th, and 16th August (when a teenager was tragically hit by a live bullet).

The three-finger campaign is the latest in a series of protests that have epitomised Thai politics over the last fifty years. Some — in October 1973 and May 1992 — resulted in dozens of casualties, though ultimately led to democratic reforms. Others — in October 1976 and May 2010 — simply ended in tragedy. Perhaps the most successful, on their own terms, have been the yellow-shirt and ‘Shutdown Bangkok’ campaigns, both of which followed the same playbook and achieved the same result (a military coup).

Ultimately, the three-finger protests did not achieve their objectives, and their leaders are now either behind bars or living in exile. But the impact of the 2020–2021 protests can be measured by the changing attitudes of younger people towards traditional national values, and by the increasing popularity of the ‘orange movement’ in recent elections.

If Dad Were Looking Up, He Would Be Happy

To mark Thai Father’s Day on 5th December, Untitled for Film showed a programme of short films on the rooftop of Chiang Mai University’s Department of Media Arts and Design. The event was a rare opportunity to see some of the films from the หนังน่าจะแบน (‘movies that should be banned’) competition held at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre back in 2013.

Sorayos Prapapan’s Long Live the Kim (คิม) and Akkara Patchakkhapati’s Pain (เจ็บปวด) were submitted to the BACC competition, and Pain won first prize, but ironically both films were considered too sensitive to be shown there. Long Live the Kim features news footage from 2011, and its soundtrack is the song King in Fairy Tales (พระราชาในนิทาน). Pain ends with a collage of photographs of Thai political events and memes.

Warat Bureephakdee’s deeply moving film Secret Among Wings (ความลับในฝูงนก) was also shown last night. Sounds from May 2010 of red-shirt protesters calling for democracy, and the military responding with gunfire, are heard over present-day shots of Ratchaprasong and nearby Wat Pathum Wanaram. (Thai Cinema Uncensored discusses these locations as examples of ‘guilty landscapes’, public spaces that bore silent witness to past violence.)

The title of yesterday’s event — If Dad Were Looking Up, He Would Be Happy — recalls an exhibition held at Cartel Artspace, Our Daddy Always Looks Down on Us (คิดถึงคนบนฟ้า), which opened on Father’s Day in 2021. (Note especially the prepositions in their titles.) Their sentimental Thai titles are also very similar: If Dad Were Looking Up’s Thai title is คิดถึงคนบน(ดาด)ฟ้า. (The additional word in brackets refers to the rooftop location of the screening.)

29th Thai Short Film and Video Festival

The 29th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 29) runs from 13th to 21st December at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya. Eighty-eight films will be shown, selected from more than 600 submissions. Most of the submitted films were screened in the online Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน), which concluded yesterday.

The highlights of this year’s festival include Buariyate Eamkamol’s A Fire 9 Kilometers Away on 14th December, Uruphong Raksasad’s Cut of Speech on 20th December, and Vichart Somkaew’s When My Father Was a Communist (เมื่อพ่อผมเป็นคอมมิวนิสต์) on 21st December. (The politically sensitive Cut of Speech was not shown in the Short Film Marathon.)

The feature-length Cut of Speech is the fourth and final film in which Uruphong documents the recent student protest movement. It features clips of forty-four speakers, in reference to article 44 of the interim constitution drafted after the 2014 coup. Uruphong’s previous films in the series are: You Fucked with the Wrong Generation (made for television, but not broadcast), Songs of Angry People (which premiered in South Korea), and Paradox Democracy (shown at last year’s Short Film and Video Festival).

A Fire 9 Kilometers Away

Buariyate’s A Fire 9 Kilometers Away is a blend of documentary and fiction, and features a poem dedicated to Samaphan Srithep, one of the youngest victims of the crackdown on protesters in Bangkok in 2010. Projected as a diptych, the film makes ironic juxtapositions, showing military snipers on 10th April 2010 alongside footage of revellers firing water pistols during the April Songkran festival. It was previously shown at Wildtype 2025 and the Media Arts and Design Festival 2025 (บึงเบ๊ง).

When My Father Was a Communist

For When My Father Was a Communist, Vichart interviewed his father, Sawang, and other former members of the Communist Party of Thailand. The film is a valuable social history, as the veterans explain their decisions to join the CPT, and describe their experiences in the forests of Phatthalung.

When My Father Was a Communist is also a record of the state’s violent suppression of communist insurgents, hundreds (potentially thousands) of whom were burned in oil drums in 1972. These so-called ‘red barrel’ deaths were most prevalent in Phatthalung, and have never been officially investigated. (The names of the victims are listed before the film’s end credits.) There have been other documentaries about the red barrels, but When My Father Was a Communist stands out for Vichart’s close connections to the subject: this is a deeply personal project, as he was born in Phatthalung, and he is documenting the memories of his elderly father.

The film notes that the repressive atmosphere of the 1970s has not disappeared. One speaker says that the political system has barely changed since the military dictatorship after the 1976 coup. Another makes a direct comparison between the suppression of political opponents then and now: “dissolving political parties, slapping people with Article 112 charges... It’s like arresting them and throwing them in red barrels, but they do it in a different way now.”

The film has been screened around the country, including at Phimailongweek (พิมายฬองวีค) in Korat. Its most recent screening was in Phetchaburi last week.

Yellow-shirts v. Red-shirts

Thai politics over the past two decades has been dominated by the polarisation between two broad groups of protesters: red-shirts and yellow-shirts. They represent opposite ends of the political spectrum, and they are both defined by their attitudes towards the divisive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Yellow-shirts

Street protests against Thaksin began in 2005, intensifying in early 2006 after he sold a 48% stake in his Shin Corp. business to Singaporean company Temasek. (Thaksin’s government had increased the legal limit on foreign ownership of telecom firms to enable the Shin sale, and changed the tax code to avoid paying any tax on the deal, in a blatant manipulation of the law for personal gain.)

Media mogul Sondhi Limthongkul formed the People’s Alliance for Democracy and organised weekly anti-Thaksin rallies, attended by PAD supporters wearing yellow shirts to symbolise their loyalty to the monarchy (and, by extension, Thaksin’s implied disloyalty). The first major PAD protest took place at Bangkok’s Royal Plaza on 4th February 2006.

On 5th March 2006, around 50,000 PAD protesters marched from Sanam Luang to Democracy Monument, burning Thaksin in effigy. On 29th March 2006, anti-Thaksin demonstrators gathered at Siam Square, bringing the shopping district to a standstill.

Despite its name, the PAD was definitely not a pro-democracy organisation. Sondhi caused maximum disruption and instability, creating the conditions for a military coup, which took place in 2006.

The PAD revived its campaign in 2008, occupying Government House for three months and even forcing the closure of two airports in Bangkok. After the yellow-shirts had blockaded parliament for three days, riot police dispersed the demonstrators on 5th October 2008.

The 2006 Coup

Thaksin was deposed by a military coup on 19th September 2006. But if the coup had been designed to eradicate Thaksin’s political influence, it was unsuccessful, as even today — almost twenty years later — he remains one of the most influential political figures in Thailand. The yellow-shirt rallies had paved the way for the coup, and the subsequent red-shirt protests were held in response to it.

Red-shirts

The red-shirt movement, formally known as the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship, began after the 2006 coup that toppled Thaksin’s government, and for many years red-shirts were regarded as Thaksin loyalists. Unlike the more affluent yellow-shirts from Bangkok, red-shirts supporters were predominantly working-class voters from Isan and the north of Thailand.

Red-shirt protesters caused disruption in Bangkok in 2009, with a mass rally outside Government House on 8th April, followed by a violent confrontation with the military at Din Daeng on 13th April. Then, in March 2010, the UDD began a long-running and largely peaceful series of rallies near Democracy Monument, initially triggered by the seizure of Thaksin’s assets by the Supreme Court.

On 10th April 2010, the military launched a crackdown on the protesters at Democracy Monument. The red-shirts intensified their demonstrations, establishing city-centre protest camps at Ratchaprasong and Sala Daeng. On 14th May 2010, the camps were surrounded by armed soldiers, leading to a week of deadly street battles between protesters and military snipers.

Ninety-four people were killed in April and May 2010, a death toll exceeding the most notorious crackdowns in modern Thai history, namely October 1973, October 1976, and May 1992. The events of April and May are known in Thai as ‘เมษาโหด’ (‘cruel April’) and ‘พฤษภาอำมหิต’ (‘savage May’).