Tim Davie, the director-general of the BBC, and Deborah Turness, the broadcaster’s head of news, resigned on Sunday in the wake of accusations that a flagship documentary had misleadingly edited a speech by US President Donald Trump, sparking a broader debate on the corporation’s impartiality.
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In a statement posted on the BBC’s website, Davie acknowledged the broadcaster’s imperfections and emphasized accountability. “Like all public organisations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent and accountable,” he said. “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 resignations follow a report in The Daily Telegraph this week, which highlighted concerns raised in a summer memo on impartiality by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee. UK Culture, Media and Sport Minister Lisa Nandy described the allegations as “incredibly serious” in an interview with BBC television earlier on Sunday. She noted that the Trump edit was part of a pattern of issues, including “systemic bias” in reporting on topics like Israel-Gaza, transgender issues, and the US president. “It isn’t just about the Panorama programme, although that is incredibly serious,” Nandy said. “There are a series of very serious allegations made, the most serious of which is that there is systemic bias in the way that difficult issues are reported at the BBC… a tendency for editorial standards and the language used in reports to be entirely inconsistent.”
The BBC has pledged a “full response” to Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Monday.
At the heart of the scandal is a clip from Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech, during which he was accused of inciting the mob attack on the US Capitol to challenge his election loss to Joe Biden. The edited footage, featured in the BBC’s Panorama documentary “Trump: A Second Chance?” broadcast the week before the 2024 US election spliced together sections to make it appear as though Trump urged supporters to “fight like hell” while walking to the Capitol with them.
In the unedited version, however, Trump encouraged the crowd to “walk with [him] and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.” The alteration, critics argue, distorted the context of Trump’s remarks at a time when he was still contesting the election results.
This is not the BBC’s first brush with controversy this year. In February, it issued apologies for “serious flaws” in the documentary “Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone.” In October, the UK media watchdog imposed a sanction for a “materially misleading” programme narrated by the son of a former Hamas official.
President Trump seized on the resignations on Sunday, blasting “corrupt journalists” in a social media post. “These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election,” he wrote, claiming the exposure of such bias vindicated his long-standing criticisms of the British broadcaster.
The scandal has intensified scrutiny of the BBC, which is funded by the UK’s mandatory TV licence fee, as lawmakers and the public demand reforms to ensure editorial integrity.
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