The head of Britain’s British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and a top news executive resigned from the organization on Sunday after a memo criticizing the editing of US President Donald Trump’s 2021 speech was leaked shortly before protesters stormed the US Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021.
The BBC said its director-general Tim Davie and news CEO Deborah Turness had chosen to resign after the memo was published.
The memo comes from former adviser Michael Prescott, a former journalist who served as an independent adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Board for three years before resigning in June. He claimed that the editors of the 2024 BBC Panorama documentary spliced together two parts of President Trump’s speech to make it appear that the president actively encouraged the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot following his 2020 election loss.
President Trump responded to their resignations in a post on his Truth social platform Sunday night, calling Davie and Turnes “very dishonest people who tried to tip the scales in the presidential election.”
Mr Davey said he had taken “ultimate responsibility” for the mistakes made and had decided to step down after “reflecting on the very demanding personal and professional demands of managing this role over many years in these frenetic times”.
What is at the center of this?
The resignations of Mr Davie and Mr Turnes followed the controversy surrounding the BBC Panorama documentary Trump: A Second Chance?, which was broadcast a week before the 2024 US presidential election.
The clip from the show appears to be two different parts of President Trump’s January 6, 2021 speech combined into one sequence. In this episode, President Trump is shown saying, “We’ll walk to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you. And we’ll fight. We’ll fight like hell.”
But according to a transcript of Trump’s remarks that day, he said: “We’re going to walk to the Capitol and cheer for our brave senators and congressmen and women, but maybe not as much for some.”
Almost an hour later, President Trump used the phrase “we are fighting like hell” but did not mention the protesters at the Capitol. “We are fighting like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, we won’t have a country anymore,” he said.
Who are Tim Davie and Deborah Turnes?
Tim Davie became Director-General of the BBC in September 2020. He was responsible for overseeing the organization’s editorial, administrative, and creative work. He previously led BBC Studios for seven years and worked for companies including Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo.
In an email to staff on Sunday, Ms Davey said it was “entirely my decision” to leave the job she has held for five years. “We are coordinating the exact timing with the board to allow for an orderly transition to his successor over the coming months,” he said.
Meanwhile, Deborah Turness has been CEO of BBC News since 2022, leading a team of around 6,000 employees and broadcasting to around 500 million people around the world. She previously served as CEO of ITN and president of NBC News.
Mr Turness said over the weekend that the controversy over the Trump documentary had “reached a stage where it is damaging the BBC, which I love. As CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, I take responsibility.”
“Leaders need to be held fully accountable in public life, which is why I am resigning,” she said in a memo to staff. “While some mistakes have been made, I want to be absolutely clear that recent claims that BBC News is institutionally biased are false.”
Former Sun editor-in-chief David Yelland told the BBC Radio 4 Today program on Monday that Ms Davie and Mr Turness were victims of a “coup”. However, both they and the BBC deny this.
How did the White House respond?
The incident prompted President Trump’s press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, to criticize the BBC, calling it “100 percent fake news” and a “propaganda agency” over the weekend.
Meanwhile, President Trump posted on his Truth Social platform: “All the top people at the BBC, including my boss Tim Davie, are quitting/being fired because they were caught ‘fabricating’ my very good (perfect!) speech on January 6th.”
He added that “very dishonest people” were “trying to tip the scales in the presidential election…and above all they are from a foreign country that many consider our number one ally. What a horror for our democracy!”
What else is the BBC accused of?
Mr. Prescott’s leaked memo did not just refer to the panoramic editing of Mr. Trump’s speech. Criticism also focused on a number of other areas of the BBC’s work, including its coverage of transgender issues and racism, but most notably its coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza.
Mr Prescott accused the BBC of anti-Israel bias within its Arabic service, claiming that contributors were placing too much emphasis on articles critical of Israel. He also accused the company of “misrepresenting” the number of women and children killed in the Gaza Strip and the problem of starvation among Palestinians in the besieged enclave.
A former BBC adviser said he sent the memo out of “desperation at the BBC executive’s inaction” on these and other issues.
Charles Moore, former editor-in-chief of Britain’s right-wing newspaper The Daily Telegraph, accused the BBC of “the most extraordinary degree of systematic bias, particularly in BBC Arabic” in its coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza.
Regarding news in general, he told the Today show, “I always (report) from a kind of metropolitan leftist standpoint. That’s the bias, pretty consistently.”
However, the BBC denies that it is institutionally biased.
Why has the BBC’s coverage of Gaza been accused of bias?
British media regulator Ofcom said in February that a BBC documentary about Palestinian children living in Israel’s war on Gaza, narrated by the 13-year-old son of the deputy agriculture minister in the Hamas-run government, breached impartiality rules.
Five days after it aired, the BBC removed the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone from its online streaming platform. In July, the BBC’s own investigation found the program had breached editorial guidelines regarding accuracy.
But the BBC has also been accused by others of being biased in favor of Israel.
In November, the group was accused of favoring Israel in reporting on the Gaza war, with more than 100 staff members criticizing the group’s lack of “accurate, evidence-based journalism.”
An internal letter signed by more than 100 anonymous staff members at the BBC was sent to Tim Davie and Deborah Turnes, stating that “fundamental journalistic principles are lacking when it comes to holding Israel to account for its actions”.
What other controversies has the BBC faced in recent years?
The BBC, which is funded by a compulsory license fee paid by every British household that owns a television, has long been accused by rival media organizations and politicians of failing to uphold its commitment to impartiality in its coverage of global news and events and of having a “liberal” bias.
In March 2023, the BBC struggled to contain a scandal surrounding the views on immigration of former professional footballer and highest-paid sports presenter Gary Lineker. He was ultimately removed from hosting the BBC show Match of the Day for criticizing the British government’s asylum seeker policy, leading to a temporary walkout by some colleagues in a show of solidarity.
Controversy over Lineker reignited in May 2025 after he posted an Instagram post about Zionism that included a picture of a rat, which critics claimed was an anti-Semitic insult.
In response, Lineker said: “I recognize the mistake and upset I have caused and would like to reiterate how much I regret it.” The BBC said he would leave the organization permanently.
Elsewhere, the BBC has faced lingering reputational damage since revelations about former TV presenter Jimmy Savile’s decades-long sexual abuse spree came to light after his death in 2011.
A post-mortem inquest revealed that Savile abused his celebrity status and access to BBC facilities to abuse hundreds of victims, many of them children, but complaints to the company about his behavior were ignored or even covered up.
Recently, the station was again rocked by allegations regarding one of its main news anchors, Huw Edwards. In 2023, Edwards was accused of paying for up to 41 sexually explicit images he received on WhatsApp, including of victims between the ages of seven and nine.
The incident reignited scrutiny over how the BBC deals with staff misconduct and reignited painful questions about trust and oversight within the BBC, but ultimately the BBC admitted it should have responded to complaints sooner.
What does this latest crisis mean for the future of the BBC?
Sunday’s resignation comes at a sensitive time for the BBC, as the government plans to review the BBC’s Royal Charter ahead of the end of its mandate in 2027.
The Royal Charter sets out the terms and objectives of the BBC’s operation and typically lasts for around 10 years with each renewal.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy previously described the bias allegations as “incredibly serious” and said the government’s review of the charter would help the BBC “adapt to this new era”.
Jonah Hull of Al Jazeera in London said: “This is a huge moment for the BBC…arguably the best-known news media brand, built on its reputation for journalistic integrity and impartiality.”
Mr Hull said that in addition to the recent scandal over the misleading editing of President Trump’s speech, the BBC has also come under fire for reporting on “transgender issues, anti-Israel bias…all of which have led to a barrage of criticism directed at the BBC”.
BBC chairman Sameer Shah, who apologized for an “error in judgment” over the editing of President Trump’s speech on Monday’s Panorama program, denied that the BBC was guilty of systemic bias, but will present his vision for the BBC’s future to parliament’s culture, media and sport committee on Monday.
Speaking at a regular press conference for journalists at 10 Downing Street on Monday, the Prime Minister’s press secretary also said he did not believe the BBC was “institutionally biased”.
