Tim Davie in 2022. The top BBC executive resigned Sunday.Hannah McKay/The Associated Press
The BBC has been thrown into turmoil after its Director General and the head of its news division resigned Sunday night over allegations of bias in the British broadcaster’s coverage of U.S. President Donald Trump, the war in Gaza as well as race and gender issues.
Tim Davie announced Sunday night that he was resigning as Director General after five years in the post.
“I have been reflecting on the very intense personal and professional demands of managing this role over many years in these febrile times,” he said in a statement.
Deborah Turness, head of BBC News, told staff Sunday night that she had “taken the difficult decision that it will no longer be my role to lead you in the collective vision that we all have: to pursue the truth with no agenda.”
The BBC had been under growing pressure for days after a leaked memo by Michael Prescott, a former advisor to the BBC’s standards committee, raised a number of issues about the corporation’s news coverage.
Among his most serious concerns was a documentary produced by the BBC’s flagship Panorama program about Mr. Trump that was shown just before last year’s presidential election.
The memo alleged that a speech Mr. Trump gave on Jan. 6, 2021, had been edited to show that he incited a crowd on Capital Hill to violence.
“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell,” said a clip aired in the program.
Mr. Prescott pointed out that “In reality, the first part of Trump’s speech: “‘We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you,’” came 15 minutes into the speech. The second half of the sentence that was aired by Panorama, ‘and we fight. We fight like hell….’ came 54 minutes later.”
He added that the program also did not include Mr. Trump saying: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Mr. Prescott’s memo, which ran 19 pages, also raised a number of concerns about other coverage and concluded: “There are clearly worrying systemic issues with the BBC’s coverage in the areas set out above. From what I witnessed, I fear the problems could be even more widespread than this summary might suggest.”
Mr. Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt, described the BBC as “100% fake news” and a “propaganda machine” after the memo was first published in the Daily Telegraph last week.
British taxpayers were being “forced to foot the bill for a Leftist propaganda machine,” she added.
The BBC’s chair, Samir Shah, is also expected to issue an apology to a parliamentary committee on Monday for the Panorama program.