Donald Trump to seek legal advice over “biased” BBC documentary

• Trump organisation critical of BBC’s decision to show documentary in UK

• Property tycoon argues film did not represent views of residents that support development

• Donald Trump says he is seeking legal advice over film’s airing on the BBC

“You’ve Been Trumped” attracted a television audience of more than one million when it was screened last night on BBC 2.

The documentary, which was originally released last year, was made by a two-man team from Angus-based independent production company Montrose Pictures, who spent a year following the development of the tycoon’s plans to build the “best golf course in the world” and his battle with local residents.

The film has already won the Scottish Screen Archive Prize for Best Feature Documentary at the Edindocs Festival in Edinburgh and another major accolade at the Sheffield Doc/Fest. A copy of the documentary was also flown to New York last year by director Anthony Baxter for a special screening at the IFC Centre on the billionaire’s Manhattan doorstep.

But the BBC’s decision to screen the documentary on British television has sparked a furious backlash from the Trump Organisation in Scotland.

Biased

Sarah Malone, executive vice president of Trump International Golf Links Scotland, declared today: “We are appalled at the BBC’s decision to broadcast the highly biased and manipulative so-called documentary ‘You’ve Been Trumped’. We totally denounce the BBC for further abandoning its own editorial integrity by blatantly refusing us a right of reply at the end of the broadcast last night. It just goes to show that recent criticism of the BBC’s lack of sound editorial judgement to be correct.

It is not a documentary - it is a piece of propaganda that is wildly inaccurate, defamatory and deliberately misleading.”

She claimed: “Baxter is not a credible journalist or film-maker. He set out to create a sensationalist, ‘Local Hero’ story, through underhand, clandestine means, in the hope of making money off the Trump name. He’s created a modern day fairytale that bears no resemblance to reality or the truth.

“The film focuses on the skewed views of three or four opponents to the development, and does not represent the hundreds of thousands of local residents who support the project (nearly 90% of the population according to an independent local pole) or the ten thousand people that flocked to play the course this season.”

Ms Malone added: “We have taken legal advice, and are determined not to let this matter end here.”

The BBC has still to comment on the Trump statement.