The BBC was caught in a fresh tempest on Tuesday, after a Dutch author and historian accused the broadcaster of censorship by deleting from a venerated radio lecture series his phrase critical of President Trump.
The author, Rutger Bregman, said he had characterized Mr. Trump as the “most openly corrupt president in American history,” a line the BBC removed before the first of four in its annual Reith Lectures was broadcast on Tuesday.
Mr. Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion to $5 billion over a documentary in which a speech he gave to supporters on the day the U.S. Capitol was attacked was misleadingly edited.
The BBC said it had decided to delete the line in Mr. Bregman’s lecture on the advice of lawyers. The broadcaster did not say whether it had acted because of Mr. Trump’s legal threat.
“I’m just deeply saddened by it,” Mr. Bregman said in an interview. “I am also confused. I really did not think they would do it.”
Mr. Bregman said BBC officials told him last Wednesday that the line was being scrutinized by its lawyers in the United States and officials at the highest levels of the broadcaster. On Monday, the day before the lecture aired on BBC Radio 4, he said, he was told it had been excised.
“They did say a legal situation played a role,” Mr. Bregman added. “They said this wouldn’t have happened if I did the lecture three months ago. That’s why I feel quite confident in saying they are bending the knee to authoritarianism.”
A BBC spokesman said that the lectures, like other programs, “are required to comply with the BBC’s editorial guidelines” and that the edits were not uncommon.
Still, Mr. Bregman’s lecture was another flashpoint between the BBC and the White House. The Daily Mail, which reported on it last week, described Mr. Bregman as “a fierce critic of the U.S. president.”
The newspaper quoted Steven Cheung, the White House director of communications as saying, “It’s no surprise that they have commissioned a rabid anti-Trump individual to deliver a lecture.”
The BBC has apologized to Mr. Trump for splicing together footage from comments he made about 50 minutes apart in the Jan. 6, 2021, speech, shortly before a riot broke out at the Capitol. The chair of the BBC board, Samir Shah, said the editing “did give the impression of a direct call for violent action.”
The crisis over the documentary at the BBC has led to the resignation of two top executives, Tim Davie, the director general; and Deborah Turness, the chief executive of BBC News. It has also raised questions about the BBC’s board and criticism from the right and the left that it has an institutional bias.
Under normal circumstances, the Reith Lectures might have served as a steadying influence in a turbulent time — a reminder of the BBC’s rich legacy and the central role it plays in Britain’s public life.
Founded in 1948 and named after the BBC’s first director general, John Reith, the lectures are delivered by artists, writers, statesmen and other public figures. They draw a global audience, including in the United States, airing on the BBC World Service.
Among those who have delivered the lectures are J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory; the author Hilary Mantel; the physicist Stephen Hawking; the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah; and the historian Niall Ferguson.
Mr. Bregman, 37, a popular writer and lecturer on history, philosophy and economics, said that being asked to deliver the lectures was “one of the highlights of my career.” He said he had worked extensively with a team of BBC producers and editors to hone the four lectures.
“This is not me standing behind a lectern and free-styling,” he said. “Every word was measured; every word was thought about.”
The lectures, which have the umbrella title “Moral Revolution,” aim to “explore the moral decay and un-seriousness of today’s elites, drawing historical parallels to past eras of corruption that preceded transformative movements especially the 19th-century campaign to abolish slavery,” the BBC’s website says.
The first installment, recorded before an audience in the BBC’s London studios, is titled “A Time of Monsters.” In a video Mr. Bregman posted on social media, he said, “The irony couldn’t be bigger.”
The lecture, he said, “is exactly about the cowardice of today’s elites, about universities, corporations and, yes, media networks, bending the knee to authoritarianism.”
In the interview, Mr. Bregman said his reference to Mr. Trump was “almost like a throwaway comment — like, we already know this, but now I want to dunk on my side.”
While he devoted much of the lecture to critiquing elite groups in the European Union and the European left, Mr. Bregman also referred to a “modern-day Caligula” in power in Washington, if not by name.
“If this leads more people to read or listen to the lecture, that’s great,” Mr. Bregman said. But he added of the deletion: “You can hear it. It’s not natural. You can feel it get cut off.”
Mark Landler is the London bureau chief of The Times, covering the United Kingdom, as well as American foreign policy in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades.
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