BBC leaders resign amid scandal over misleading edit of Trump speech
CNN
By Sophie Tanno and Mitchell McCluskey, CNN
London (CNN) — Two top leaders at the BBC resigned on Sunday amid an escalating scandal over impartiality and bias that plunged Britain’s public broadcaster into one of its biggest crises in recent years.
The BBC’s most senior executive, director general Tim Davie, and the chief executive of the news division, Deborah Turness, both quit after the leak of a deeply critical memo that, among other things, revealed that the BBC had misleadingly edited a speech by US President Donald Trump to make it appear that he had directly called for violence on January 6, 2021.
In a note to staff on Sunday afternoon, Davie said his resignation was “entirely my decision.” He added that as director general, he took “ultimate responsibility” for mistakes made by the BBC.
Turness said the controversy over a documentary made by the BBC’s “Panorama” series had “reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC – an institution that I love.”
“The buck stops with me,” she added.
The resignations come after the Telegraph newspaper published details of a leaked internal BBC dossier compiled by Michael Prescott, who had been hired to advise the BBC on editorial standards and guidelines.
In an internal whistleblowing memo, Prescott revealed that last year the BBC had broadcast a “doctored” Trump speech, making it seem that the president had encouraged Capitol Hill rioters, telling them he was going to walk with them to “fight like hell.”
In fact, Trump said in his speech in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, that “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
Trump welcomed the news of the resignations and thanked the Telegraph for “exposing” corruption, which he called a “terrible thing for democracy.”
“These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a presidential election,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The allegations led White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt to blast the BBC as “100% fake news” and a “propaganda machine.”
British taxpayers are being “forced to foot the bill for a leftist propaganda machine,” Leavitt said in a recent interview with the Telegraph.
On Sunday, Leavitt posted a brief response to X, presenting the headline from the Telegraph article, followed by the BBC article announcing Davie’s resignation.
After the report of the dossier emerged, Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., shared it on X, writing: “The FAKE NEWS ‘reporters’ in the UK are just as dishonest and full of s— as the ones here in America!!!!”
Lisa Nandy, the British secretary of state for culture, media, and sport, thanked Davie for his work at the BBC after he announced his resignation.
“He has led the BBC through a period of significant change and helped the organisation to grip the challenges it has faced in recent years,” Nandy said in a post on X.
“Now more than ever, the need for trusted news and high quality programming is essential to our democratic and cultural life, and our place in the world,” she said.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch applauded the resignation but said that there is a “catalogue of serious failures that runs far deeper” at the BBC.
“The new leadership must now deliver genuine reform of the culture of the BBC, top to bottom – because it should not expect the public to keep funding it through a compulsory licence fee unless it can finally demonstrate true impartiality,” Badenoch wrote on X.
The BBC is largely funded by a £174.50 ($228) license fee paid annually by every household in the United Kingdom that owns a television or watches its streaming content.
As a public broadcaster, the organization is held to standards on its editorial independence and fairness.
The BBC, whose charter describes its mission as providing “duly accurate and impartial news” in the public interest, has been pulled into controversy repeatedly over the years.
BBC chairman Richard Sharp resigned in 2023 after a report found he failed to disclose his involvement in facilitating a loan of almost $1 million to former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The BBC faced a boycott in 2023 after it suspended Gary Lineker from hosting the flagship soccer show after the former soccer player criticized the government’s asylum policy as “immeasurably cruel.” Lineker was later reinstated.
In 2012, director general George Entwistle resigned after a BBC report falsely implicated a senior British politician in a child abuse scandal.
The director of news, Helen Boaden, and her deputy, Steve Mitchell, were asked to temporarily “step aside” later that year pending the outcome of an internal review related to a police investigation of sexual abuse by former BBC presenter Jimmy Savile.
In 2004, BBC director general Greg Dyke resigned after facing intense pressure over a government inquiry into a Ministry of Defense employee who died after being revealed as a source in a BBC report which claimed that the government had knowingly “sexed up” a dossier on whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
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