Tim Davie, director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC); and Deborah Turness, CEO of BBC News; have both resigned from their roles.
They tendered their resignations after the news corporation came under fire for editing a documentary involving US President Donald Trump.
Last Monday, The Telegraph published an exclusive report that showed how the edited clip made Trump appear to encourage the 2021 Capitol Hill riot.
The report cited a leaked internal whistleblowing memo from Michael Prescott, a former independent external adviser to the broadcaster’s editorial standards committee.
In the BBC Panorama documentary called ‘Trump: A Second Chance?’, the US president said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
But the memo noted that Trump’s words were an edit taken more than 50 minutes apart from his original speech in Washington DC in January 2021, where he said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
The “fight like hell” comment was taken from a section where Trump discussed how “corrupt” US elections were.
According to the Telegraph, the document said Panorama’s “distortion of the day’s events” would leave viewers asking: “Why should the BBC be trusted, and where will this all end?”
When the issue was raised with managers, they “refused to accept there had been a breach of standards”, the memo added.
Davie, who joined the BBC in September 2020, said “there have been some mistakes made and as director general I have to take ultimate responsibility”.
Turness has been a member of staff since 2022. She also acknowledged that mistakes had been made but added that “recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong”.
The BBC has been under scrutiny recently for an “anti-Israel bias” in the coverage of the Gaza war by its Arabic news service.
The leaked memo also said Prescott had raised concerns about the BBC’s coverage around trans issues.
Trump said the edit was a “terrible thing” for democracy.
