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Two top BBC leaders resigned on Sunday amid an escalating impartiality and bias scandal that has plunged Britain’s public broadcaster into one of its biggest crises in recent years.
The BBC’s most senior director general, Tim Davie, and its chief news officer, Deborah Turnes, resigned following the leak of a highly critical memo revealing, among other things, that the BBC had misleadingly edited US President Donald Trump’s speech on 6 January 2021 to make it appear as if the president had directly called for violence.
In a memo to staff Sunday afternoon, Davey said his resignation was “entirely my decision.” He added that as director-general he had “ultimate responsibility” for the mistakes made by the BBC.
Mr Turness said the controversy surrounding documentaries produced by the BBC’s Panorama series had “reached a stage where it was damaging to the BBC, which I love”.
“I am not responsible,” she added.
BBC chairman Sameer Shah apologized on Monday for what he called an “error in judgment” over the way President Trump’s speech was edited.
The resignations were announced after the Telegraph published details of leaked internal BBC documents compiled by Michael Prescott, who was hired to advise the BBC on editorial standards and guidelines.
In his whistleblower memo, Mr Prescott revealed that last year the BBC broadcast a “fabricated” speech by President Trump in which he appeared to encourage the Capitol rioters by telling them he would walk with them to “fight like hell”.
In fact, in a speech in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, President Trump said, “We’re going to walk to the Capitol and cheer on our brave senators, congressmen and women.”
President Trump welcomed news of his resignation and thanked the Telegraph for “exposing” the corruption, which he said was “horrible to democracy”.
“These are very dishonest people who tried to tip the scales in the presidential election,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
In a letter to British MPs on Monday, Shah acknowledged that “the way the speech was edited gave the impression that it was a direct call for violence”, for which the BBC apologized. “It is clear that the BBC must stand up for impartiality,” he said, adding that the broadcaster would take action to “ensure we maintain the trust and confidence of the people we serve”.
In response to the allegations, White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt accused the BBC of “100% fake news” and a “propaganda agency”.
In a recent interview with the Telegraph, Mr Levitt said British taxpayers were being “made to pay the price of a left-wing propaganda machine”.
On Sunday, Mr Leavitt posted a short reply to X introducing the headline of the Telegraph article, followed by the BBC article announcing Mr Davie’s resignation.
After a report of this dossier came out, President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., shared it on
Britain’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Lisa Nandy thanked Mr Davie for his work at the BBC after announcing his resignation.
“He led the BBC through a period of great change and helped the BBC meet the challenges it has faced in recent years,” Nandy said in a post about X.
“Now more than ever, the need for reliable news and quality programming is essential to our democratic and cultural life and our place in the world,” she said.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch praised the resignation but said there was a “far more deep-seated catalog of serious failings” at the BBC.
“The new leadership must now deliver real reforms to the BBC’s culture from top to bottom, because the public should not be expected to continue funding the BBC through compulsory license fees unless they can finally demonstrate real fairness,” Badenoch wrote in X.
Most of the BBC’s funding comes from the £174.50 ($228) license fee paid annually by every household in the UK that owns a television or watches streaming content.
As a public broadcaster, the organization adheres to standards of editorial independence and impartiality.
The BBC’s charter states that it is mandated to provide “fully accurate and impartial news” in the public interest, but it has repeatedly been embroiled in controversy over the years.
BBC chairman Richard Sharp resigned in 2023 after reports revealed he failed to disclose his involvement in facilitating a loan of around $1 million to former prime minister Boris Johnson.
The BBC suspended former footballer Gary Lineker from hosting its flagship football program in 2023 and faced a boycott after he criticized the government’s asylum policy as “unfathomably cruel”. Mr. Lineker later returned.
In 2012, Director General George Entwistle resigned after a BBC report falsely implicated senior British officials in a child abuse scandal.
News director Helen Boaden and deputy director Steve Mitchell were asked to temporarily “stand back” later that year pending the outcome of an internal investigation into the police investigation into sexual abuse by former BBC presenter Jimmy Savile.
In 2004, BBC Director-General Greg Dyke resigned under intense pressure over the government’s investigation into a Ministry of Defense official who died after being identified as a source in a BBC report that claimed the government had deliberately “falsified” documents about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
