The Director-General of the BBC, Tim Davie, announced his resignation on Sunday following a backlash over the editing of a documentary about US President Donald Trump, who in turn accused “corrupt journalists” of election interference.
Davie and the BBC’s Head of News, Deborah Turness, stepped down after the corporation’s flagship Panorama programme was accused of misleadingly editing a Trump speech featured in its recent documentary.
Reacting to the resignations, Trump said the controversy had exposed “corrupt journalists,” adding: “These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a presidential election.”
In a statement posted on the BBC website, Davie said: “Like all public organisations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent and accountable. While not being the only reason, the current debate around BBC News has understandably contributed to my decision… I have to take ultimate responsibility.”
The row follows a report by The Daily Telegraph earlier in the week, which revealed that concerns over the documentary’s impartiality were first raised last summer in a memo by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Standards Committee.
UK Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Lisa Nandy described the allegations as “incredibly serious” and said the issue went beyond the Panorama programme. “There are a series of very serious allegations made — the most serious of which is that there is systemic bias in the way difficult issues are reported at the BBC,” she told BBC television on Sunday, citing inconsistencies in coverage of topics including Israel and Gaza, trans rights, and Trump.
The BBC said it would deliver “a full response” to Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Monday.
The editing dispute
The controversy centres on a Panorama documentary titled Trump: A Second Chance?, aired in the run-up to last year’s US presidential election. The programme included a clip from Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech — the day of the Capitol riot — that appeared to show him urging supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.”
In the unedited footage, however, Trump told the crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.” At the time, he was still contesting the results of the 2020 election, which saw President Joe Biden defeat him after one term in office.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared to welcome the news of Davie’s resignation, posting a screenshot of the BBC’s announcement on X and reiterating earlier criticism that the clip had been “purposefully and dishonestly edited.”
The BBC, which is funded by a compulsory licence fee paid by all UK television viewers, has faced a string of editorial controversies this year. In February, it apologised for “serious flaws” in another documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. And in October, it accepted a sanction from the UK’s media regulator for airing what was deemed a “materially misleading” programme, later found to feature a narrator who was the son of Hamas’s former deputy agriculture minister.
AFP
