Top BBC bosses resign over edit of Donald Trump documentary
The BBC is facing questions over how it edited Donald Trump's speech from January 6, 2021. (Reuters, file photo)
In short:
The BBC's director-general and head of news have resigned amid criticism of the broadcaster's editing of a speech Donald Trump delivered before protesters attacked the US Capitol.
Critics said the edit was misleading and cut out a section where Mr Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
Mr Trump has reacted, saying those who "doctored" his speech were "very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a presidential election".
Two senior bosses at the BBC have resigned after criticism of the broadcaster's editing of a speech by US President Donald Trump.
The BBC said director-general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness both announced their resignations on Sunday.
Britain's public broadcaster has been criticised for editing a speech Mr Trump delivered on January 6, 2021, before protesters attacked the US Capitol in Washington.
Critics said the way the speech was edited for a BBC documentary was misleading and cut out a section where Mr Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
In a letter to staff, Mr Davie said quitting after five years was "entirely my decision".
Tim Davie has resigned as head of the BBC after controversy around the editing of a Donald Trump speech. (Reuters: Hannah McKay)
"Overall, the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made and as director-general I have to take ultimate responsibility," Mr Davie said.
He said he was "working through exact timings with the Board to allow for an orderly transition to a successor over the coming months".
Turness said the controversy about the Trump documentary had "reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC ā an institution that I love".
"In public life, leaders need to be fully accountable, and that is why I am stepping down," she said in a note to staff.
"As the CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, the buck stops with me.
"While mistakes have been made, I want to be absolutely clear: recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong."
Trump calls those who 'doctored' speech 'corrupt'
Pressure on the broadcaster's top executives has been growing since The Daily Telegraph newspaper in the UK published parts of a dossier compiled by Michael Prescott, who had been hired to advise the BBC on standards and guidelines.
Donald Trump has reacted, saying the BBC was caught "doctoring" his "perfect" speech. Ā (Reuters: Evelyn Hockstein)
In a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump thanked the Daily Telegraph for "exposing these corrupt 'journalists'".
"These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a presidential election,"he said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also reacted on X, posting a screenshot of an article, headlined "Trump goes to war with 'fake news' BBC".
As well as the Trump edit, the dossier criticised the BBC's coverage of transgender issues and raised concerns of anti-Israeli bias in the BBC's Arabic service.
The BBC faces greater scrutiny than other broadcasters ā and criticism from its commercial rivals ā because of its status as a national institution funded through an annual licence fee of $354 paid by all households with a television.
It is also bound by its charter to be impartial in its output, and critics are quick to point out when they think it has failed.
The criticism surrounds the BBC's edit of a speech Donald Trump delivered before protesters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. (Reuters: Leah Millis)
The BBC has also been criticised from all angles over its coverage of the Gaza war.
In February, the BBC removed a documentary about Gaza from its streaming service after it emerged the child narrator was the son of an official in the Hamas-led government.
Political leaders react to resignations
Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the opposition Conservative Party, said the BBC was full of "institutional bias", and "the new leadership must now deliver genuine reform of the culture of the BBC, top to bottom".
Nigel Farage, leader of right-wing political party Reform UK, said the resignations "must be the start of wholesale change".
"The government needs to appoint somebody with a record of coming in and turning companies and their cultures around," he said in an X post.
Lisa Nandy, the minister in charge of media in Britain's centre-left Labour government, thanked Mr Davie for his work and said the government would help the BBC secure "its role at the heart of national life for decades to come".
Steven Barnett, a communications professor at the University of Westminster in London, said the broadcaster had made a "mistake" in editing two clips of the speech together that were "actually 45 minutes apart".
"But to suggest that this was such a cardinal editorial mistake, that the director-general and the director of news should resign in my opinion is quite ridiculous," he told ABC NewsRadio.
"What we've seen is essentially a political decapitation."
AP/ABC