Six Karnataka ministers move court to restrain media
Bengaluru: Six Karnataka ministers have moved a Bangaluru court here seeking to restrain media organisations from publishing or airing any “defamatory or unauthenticated” material against them.
The six ministers of Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa-led government who moved the court Friday include Labour Minister Shivaram Hebbar, Agriculture Minister B C Patil, Cooperative Minister S T Somashekar and Health, Family Welfare and Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar.
The two others are Youth Empowerment and Sports Minister K C Narayana Gowda and Urban Development Minister Bhyrathi Basavaraj.
After hearing their joint plea, the additional city civil sessions judge reserved his order which is expected to be delivered on Saturday.
The six ministers are among the 17 MLAs who had rebelled against the Congress-JD(S) coalition government, leading to its fall in July 2019 and paving way for the BJP to come to power.
Disqualified from their respective parties Congress and JDS, the MLAs had subsequently joined the BJP, contested bypolls in December 2019 on BJP tickets and were made ministers after winning the polls.
Ramesh Jarkiholi, who recently resigned as a minister amid allegations of sexual harassment after the emergence of a sleaze CD, had also defected to the BJP along with 16 MLAs and had become a minister.
Confirming the ministers' step of approaching the court, Family Welfare and Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar, in a series of tweets, the ministers moved the court amid apprehensions of a political conspiracy being hatched to defame some “honestly working” ministers.
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Trump sues BBC for USD 10 billion, alleges defamation over edited Jan 6 speech
Washington (AP): President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit Monday seeking USD 10 billion in damages from the BBC, accusing the British broadcaster of defamation as well as deceptive and unfair trade practices.
The 33-page lawsuit accuses the BBC of broadcasting a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump,” calling it “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 US presidential election.
It accused the BBC of “splicing together two entirely separate parts of President Trump's speech on January 6, 2021” in order to ”intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said.”
The lawsuit, filed in a Florida court, seeks USD 5 billion in damages for defamation and USD 5 billion for unfair trade practices.
The BBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
The broadcaster apologised last month to Trump over the edit of the Jan. 6 speech. But the publicly funded BBC rejected claims it had defamed him, after Trump threatened legal action.
BBC chairman Samir Shah had called it an “error of judgment,” which triggered the resignations of the BBC's top executive and its head of news.
The speech took place before some of Trump's supporters stormed the US Capitol as Congress was poised to certify President-elect Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election that Trump falsely alleged was stolen from him.
The BBC had broadcast the hourlong documentary — titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” — days before the 2024 US presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 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.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
Trump said earlier Monday that he was suing the BBC “for putting words in my mouth.”
“They actually put terrible words in my mouth having to do with Jan. 6 that I didn't say, and they're beautiful words that I said, right?" the president said unprompted during an appearance in the Oval Office. "They're beautiful words, talking about patriotism and all of the good things that I said. They didn't say that, but they used terrible words.”
The president's lawsuit was filed in Florida. Deadlines to bring the case in British courts expired more than a year ago.
Legal experts have brought up potential challenges to a case in the US, given that the documentary was not shown in the country.
The lawsuit alleges that people in the US can watch the BBC's original content, including the “Panorama” series, which includes the documentary, by using the subscription streaming platform BritBox or a virtual private network service.
The 103-year-old BBC is a national institution funded through an annual license fee of 174.50 pounds (USD 230) paid by every household that watches live TV or BBC content. Bound by the terms of its charter to be impartial, it typically faces especially intense scrutiny and criticism from both conservatives and liberals.
