BBC DIRECTORS TOLD TO LAWYER UP BEFORE FLYING TO THE U.S.

🚨 BBC board members have been told to take legal advice before flying to the United States.

Deadline reports that minutes from an April board meeting logged an item titled "POTUS legal case," and recorded that any director planning U.S. travel should request advice from the BBC's legal team. The minutes did not say why. Deadline notes the corporation may be alert to the possibility of directors being subpoenaed or compelled to give evidence.

The backdrop is a $10 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Donald Trump in December over edits to a Panorama documentary that misleadingly edited his speech before the January 6th attack on the Capitol.

Last week the BBC filed a motion to dismiss in a district court in Florida. Its central argument is jurisdiction: the documentary was never broadcast in the U.S. and was geoblocked there.

Trump's legal team claims the film was streamed on iPlayer by "hundreds of individuals" using a VPN in America, with 34 of those streams said to have originated in Florida, where the case was filed.

The BBC's lawyers called that a standard that "would upend personal jurisdiction jurisprudence and have massive implications for foreign companies with online presences."

They also argued Trump has not shown actual harm, pointing out that after the documentary's release he won reelection and carried Florida by a wide margin.

No court has ruled. The allegations remain allegations.

Should a foreign broadcaster be suable in the U.S. over VPN streams?

#BBC #MediaLaw #Defamation #Deadline #causeanuproar