London- Britain's government rallied to the defence of the BBC on Tuesday after allegations of bias from its critics and the threat of a lawsuit from US President Donald Trump over the way the broadcaster edited a speech he made after losing the 2020 presidential election

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said the national broadcaster faces“challenges, some of its own making,” but is“by far the most widely used and trusted source of news in the United Kingdom”.

With critics in media and politics demanding an overhaul of the BBC's funding and governance, Nandy said“the BBC as an institution is absolutely essential to this country”.

“At a time when the lines are being dangerously blurred between facts and opinions, news and polemic, the BBC stands apart,” she said in the House of Commons.

A lawyer for Trump is demanding a retraction, apology and compensation from the broadcaster over the allegedly defamatory sequence in a documentary broadcast last year.

Fallout from the documentary has already claimed the BBC's top executive, Tim Davie, and head of news Deborah Turness, who both resigned over what the broadcaster called an“error of judgment”.

The BBC has apologised for misleading editing of a speech Trump delivered on Jan 6, 2021, before a crowd of his supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington.

Broadcast days before the November 2024 US election, the documentary“Trump: A Second Chance?” spliced together three quotes from two sections of the speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and“fight like hell”.

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