Welcome to this week’s Press Gazette Future of Media US newsletter on Friday, 14 November.

📺 You may not be surprised to hear that in the UK, the news has been non-stop BBC vs Trump this week. (Especially on BBC News.)

Yes, the BBC made a mistake - as such a large machine often does. But it’s the sort of thing that ought to be dealt with swiftly with an apology and published correction, not allowed to spiral out of control.

The BBC wasn’t quick enough to respond last week when The Telegraph began reporting on a leaked memo sharing concerns about how Panorama had edited Trump’s speech on 6 January 2021, giving a misleading impression by splicing together two lines from almost an hour apart.

This meant Trump easily took hold of the narrative and made headlines with his supposed $1bn lawsuit.

I can’t imagine any world in which he’d actually manage to be awarded $1bn damages. Did the edit actually damage his reputation? I’m not so sure when you consider the full context of what happened that day.

And then there’s the fact that he’s suing in Florida, but the programme didn’t actually air in the US.

He said he’d drop the legal action if he received an apology, retraction and compensation. Will he be satisfied with two out of three?

Overnight the BBC has apologised in a personal letter to Trump. But it won’t be paying out. It said: “We strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim.”

The ball’s back in the court of Trump’s legal team. But I sincerely hope we can now move on.

⚽ Goal publisher Footballco’s US business is now “well north” of $10m a year, going from low single digits three years ago.

It might surprise you to learn the majority of its US direct revenue is from women’s soccer at Indivisa rather than from the men’s game.

Footballco has been investing in building up its US business ahead of the huge opportunity that is the World Cup next year.

It’s gone from only really earning money from programmatic advertising on Goal, its biggest website, to bringing in a big chunk from sponsors and branded content.

Across the business the major growth levers, even as traffic is hit by the arrival of Google’s AI Overviews, are affiliates and Youtube (again, through sponsorships rather than the platform’s ad revenue share).

Read my full interview with Footballco CEO Juan Delgado here.

READ THE FULL STORY

📉 Also today we have our latest monthly update of the top 50 news websites in the US for October.

It’s a pretty grim picture, with year-on-year growth at just 12 of the sites and month-on-month increases at 14.

I have no doubt that this can be linked to the continued impact of Google’s AI Overviews reducing clickthroughs.

The winners are the likes of The Hill, The Sun, Politico, CBS News and CNBC which were all up by both measures.

Meanwhile there were double-digit drops at newsbrands like NBC News, New York Post, Newsweek, CNN, ABC News, Fox News, AP News, Reuters and SF Gate.

So there isn’t an easy answer in terms of the nature of the site or the political leaning that can explain who’s up and who’s down.

READ THE FULL STORY

🗽 I’ll be away for the next two weeks but our editor-in-chief Dominic Ponsford should be taking the reins. I’m sure he’ll let you in on all the secrets from our Media Strategy event in New York yesterday.

📈On Press Gazette this week:

1) Keyword search dying, video search is future says Sky News boss

Press Gazette interviewed heads of Sky News, ITN and Euronews at Web Summit.

2) Google promises Discover ‘fix’ as more fake AI stories top rankings

Discover feed being flooded by fake and ‘deliberately alarming or surprising’ headlines.