The pinnacle of the UK’s British Broadcasting Company (BBC) and a high information government resigned from the organisation on Sunday after a memo criticising the modifying of a 2021 speech by US President Donald Trump shortly earlier than protesters stormed the US Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021, was leaked.
The BBC mentioned Director-Normal Tim Davie and information CEO Deborah Turness had chosen to step down after the memo grew to become public.
The memo was from ex-adviser Michael Prescott, a former journalist who was an unbiased guide to the BBC’s Editorial Pointers and Requirements Board for 3 years earlier than leaving in June. He claimed that editors of a 2024 BBC Panorama documentary had spliced two components of Trump’s speech collectively so it appeared that he had actively inspired the Capitol Hill riots of January 6, 2021, which adopted his 2020 election defeat.
Trump responded to the pair’s resignation on Sunday night time, calling Davie and Turness “very dishonest individuals who tried to step on the scales of a presidential election”, in a put up on his Fact Social platform.
Davie mentioned he took “final accountability” for errors made, and had determined to resign after “reflecting on the very intense private {and professional} calls for of managing this position over a few years in these febrile occasions”.
What’s on the centre of this?
The resignations of Davie and Turness adopted controversy over a BBC Panorama documentary referred to as “Trump: A Second Likelihood?”, which was broadcast one week earlier than the 2024 US presidential election.
A clip from the programme seems to indicate two totally different components of Trump’s January 6, 2021 speech joined collectively into one sequence. Within the episode, Trump is proven as saying: “We’re going to stroll all the way down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. And we battle. We battle like hell.”
However in response to a transcript from Trump’s feedback that day, he mentioned: “We’re going to stroll all the way down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our courageous senators and congressmen and ladies, and we’re most likely not going to be cheering a lot for a few of them.”
Almost an hour later, Trump then used the phrase “we battle like hell”, however not in reference to the protesters on the Capitol. “We battle like hell. And in the event you don’t battle like hell, you’re not going to have a rustic anymore,” he mentioned.
Who’re Tim Davie and Deborah Turness?
Tim Davie grew to become director-general of the BBC in September 2020. He was chargeable for overseeing the organisation’s editorial, operational and artistic work. He beforehand led BBC Studios for seven years and labored at corporations together with Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo.
In an e-mail to employees on Sunday, Davie mentioned quitting the job after 5 years “is completely my resolution”. He mentioned he was “working via actual timings with the Board to permit for an orderly transition to a successor over the approaching months”.
In the meantime, Deborah Turness had been the CEO of BBC Information since 2022, main a workforce of round 6,000 workers broadcasting to virtually half a billion individuals world wide. She was beforehand CEO of ITN and president of NBC Information.
Over the weekend, Turness mentioned that the controversy over the Trump documentary “has reached a stage the place it’s inflicting harm to the BBC – an establishment that I really like. Because the CEO of BBC Information and Present Affairs, the buck stops with me”.
“In public life, leaders must be totally accountable, and that’s the reason I’m stepping down,” she mentioned in a be aware to employees. “Whereas errors have been made, I need to be completely clear current allegations that BBC Information is institutionally biased are improper.”
David Yelland, former editor of the Solar newspaper, instructed the BBC Radio 4 At present programme on Monday that Davie and Turness have been the victims of a “coup”. Nonetheless, each they and the BBC deny this.
How has the White Home responded?
The incident prompted criticism of the BBC by Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, who described the company over the weekend as “one hundred pc faux information” and a “propaganda machine”.
For his half, Trump posted on his Fact Social platform: “The TOP individuals within the BBC, together with TIM DAVIE, the BOSS, are all quitting/FIRED, as a result of they have been caught “doctoring” my superb (PERFECT!) speech of January sixth”.
He added that “very dishonest individuals” had “tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election… On high of every part else, they’re from a Overseas Nation, one which many contemplate our Quantity One Ally. What a horrible factor for democracy!”
What else has the BBC been accused of?
Prescott’s leaked memo didn’t solely confer with the Panorama modifying of Trump’s speech. It additionally targeted criticism on a lot of different areas of the BBC’s work, equivalent to its protection of transgender points and racism – which he mentioned have been “one-sided” and “ill-researched” – however most notably its protection of Israel’s conflict on Gaza.
Prescott accused the BBC of anti-Israel bias throughout the BBC Arabic service, claiming that contributors over-emphasised tales that have been essential of Israel. He additionally accused the broader company of “misrepresenting” the variety of girls and kids killed in Gaza and the problem of Palestinian hunger within the besieged enclave.
The previous BBC adviser mentioned he had despatched the memo in “despair at inaction by the BBC Govt” over these and different points.
Charles Moore, former editor of the Every day Telegraph, a right-wing broadsheet newspaper within the UK, accused the BBC of “probably the most extraordinary diploma of systemic bias, significantly in BBC Arabic” in its protection of Israel’s conflict on Gaza.
On basic information, he instructed the At present programme, “it’s at all times [reporting] from a form of metropolitan left place. Completely constantly, that’s how the bias is.”
The BBC denies that it’s institutionally biased, nonetheless.
Why has the BBC’s Gaza protection been accused of bias?
In February, the UK’s media regulator Ofcom mentioned a BBC documentary about Palestinian kids residing via Israel’s war on Gaza broke guidelines on impartiality, because it was narrated by the 13-year-old son of a deputy agriculture minister within the Hamas-run authorities.
5 days after it was broadcast, the BBC eliminated the documentary Gaza: How To Survive A Battle Zone from its on-line streaming platform. In July, the BBC’s personal investigation discovered that the programme had breached its editorial pointers on accuracy.
However the BBC has additionally been accused by others of being biased in favour of Israel.
In November, the organisation was accused by greater than 100 of its personal employees of giving Israel beneficial protection in its reporting of the conflict on Gaza, and criticised its lack of “correct evidence-based journalism”.
An inner letter, signed by greater than 100 nameless employees on the BBC, was despatched to Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, stating: “Fundamental journalistic tenets have been missing with regards to holding Israel to account for its actions.”
What different controversies has the BBC confronted in recent times?
The BBC, which is funded by a compulsory licence payment payable by all households within the UK that personal a tv, has lengthy been accused by rival media organisations and politicians of failing to keep up a dedication to impartiality in its protection of world information and occasions and of getting a “liberal” bias.
In March 2023, the BBC struggled to comprise a scandal over the opinions of Gary Lineker – a former skilled footballer and its highest-paid sports activities presenter – on immigration. He was in the end eliminated as a presenter of BBC’s Match of the Day present after he criticised the UK authorities’s asylum-seeker coverage, briefly resulting in a walkout by a few of his colleagues in a present of solidarity.
In Might 2025, controversy over Lineker was reignited after he shared an Instagram post about Zionism that included a drawing of a rat, which critics claimed was an anti-Semitic insult.
In response, Lineker mentioned: “I recognise the error and upset that I prompted, and reiterate how sorry I’m.” The BBC mentioned he would go away the organisation altogether.
Elsewhere, the BBC has confronted lasting reputational damage following revelations that its former TV presenter Jimmy Savile perpetuated a long time of sexual abuse, which got here to gentle after his loss of life in 2011.
Posthumous investigations revealed that Savile had exploited his celeb standing and entry to BBC amenities to abuse a whole bunch of victims, a lot of them kids, whereas complaints to the company about his behaviour have been ignored and even coated up.
Extra lately, the broadcaster was once more rocked by allegations involving certainly one of its fundamental information anchors, Huw Edwards. In 2023, Edwards was accused of paying for as much as 41 sexually specific pictures he had acquired on WhatsApp, a few of victims aged between seven and 9 years.
The case reignited scrutiny over how the BBC handles employees misconduct, reviving painful questions on belief and oversight throughout the establishment, which ultimately admitted that it ought to have responded to complaints a lot quicker.
What does this newest disaster imply for the way forward for the BBC?
Sunday’s resignations come at a delicate time for the BBC, as the federal government is ready to assessment the company’s Royal Constitution earlier than the present time period expires in 2027.
The Royal Constitution units out the phrases and function of the BBC’s operations, and usually lasts for a couple of decade every time it’s renewed.
UK Tradition Secretary Lisa Nandy, who has beforehand referred to as allegations of bias “extremely critical”, mentioned a assessment of the Constitution by the federal government would assist the BBC “adapt to this new period”.
Jonah Hull, reporting for Al Jazeera in London, mentioned “it is a vastly important second for the BBC … arguably probably the most well-known information media model, constructed on a repute of journalistic integrity and impartiality”.
Along with the current scandal over the deceptive modifying of a Trump speech, Hull mentioned the BBC had additionally suffered criticism for its protection of “trans-rights points, Israel bias … all of which has led to a furore of criticism aimed on the BBC”.
BBC Chair Samir Shah, who apologised for an “error of judgement” over the modifying of Trump’s speech within the Panorama programme on Monday, however denied that the BBC is responsible of systemic bias, is because of lay out a imaginative and prescient for the BBC’s future on Monday to Parliament’s Tradition, Media and Sport Committee.
On the each day briefing for journalists at 10 Downing Avenue on Monday, the prime minister’s spokesman additionally mentioned he doesn’t imagine the BBC is “institutionally biased”.
