President Donald Trump has sought to pressure media outlets into compliance — whether by encouraging purchases by sympathetic billionaires or pushing them to settle litigation. But one broadcaster is demonstrating that those efforts can be beaten back, and it is now turning the tables on the president himself.

“The BBC, Great Britain's state broadcaster, has become that rare thing: a mainstream media organization that has taken a stand against Trump's rampant bullying,” wrote The Daily Beast's Tom Latchem on Sunday.

At the center of the dispute is a documentary. “In October 2024, the BBC aired an hour-long documentary on Trump, in which two clips from his January 6, 2021 speech — given to supporters who had amassed that day in Washington, D.C. — were stitched into what looked like a single seamless call to march on the Capitol and ‘fight like hell,’” Latchem wrote.

Trump is demanding $1 billion from the broadcaster over the program. Rather than settling, the BBC has demanded in return that Trump disclose his financial information, a move that underscores how defamation disputes can turn not just on the broadcast itself but on whether a claimant can show measurable harm.

“He has racked up $86.5 million in settlements with Disney, Paramount Global, and the parent companies of YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook despite never having won a defamation case against them in court; the 80-year-old president must have thought BBC would roll over and cough up, too,” Latchem wrote. “Instead, the broadcaster has demanded Trump prove the documentary caused him financial damage by opening the books of his family trust that holds his entire empire, and has attempted to subpoena Don Jr., Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, to testify.”

He added: “As a Brit who grew up watching the BBC (and later worked for it in various roles), I couldn't be prouder of what it is doing to fight Trump's worst excesses, and I can't wait to see what happens next.”

The Daily Beast is not alone in highlighting media outlets that resist Trump's pressure. The Wall Street Journal — despite being on the opposite side politically from ABC talk show host Jimmy Kimmel — praised the network for standing up to the president as he attempts to threaten its broadcasting licenses over its support for Kimmel's program.

“ABC sued the FCC on Tuesday for ‘coercing and retaliating’ because it ‘refuses to bow to the Administration's demands,’” the Journal's editorial board wrote on Tuesday. “The lawsuit says the government has violated its First Amendment rights ‘by launching pretextual regulatory investigations and threatening the Stations' valuable broadcast licenses.’”

Describing FCC Chairman Brendan Carr as a “mob-boss,” the Journal opined that Trump's FCC is violating “the First Amendment by letting the FCC interfere in editorial judgments and suppress disfavored content and viewpoints. ABC's lawsuit says the FCC's pressure has resulted in it ‘passing on further consideration of booking several political candidates,’ and none have appeared on the program since February.”