Tim Davie’s and Deborah Turness’s resignations come off the back of internal concerns over the edit of a Donald Trump speech in an episode of the BBC’s Panorama programme.

The Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday that a memo by a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee raised the issue, as well as other concerns about impartiality, in the summer.

The concerns regard clips spliced together of the US president’s speech on January 6 2021. The edit was part of the documentary Trump: A Second Chance? broadcast, which was broadcast by the BBC before last year’s US elections.

The edit makes it appear he told supporters he was going to walk to the US Capitol with them to “fight like hell”, suggesting that he was encouraging violence.

Critics said that the way the speech was edited for a BBC documentary was misleading and cut out a section where Trump said that he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully. 

The corporation is expected to apologise on Monday over the impartiality concerns.

‘Panorama is causing damage to BBC’

Turness explicitly referenced the documentary edit in her resignation note (see our post at 6.41pm).

She wrote: “The ongoing controversy around the Panorama on President Trump has reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC – an institution that I love.

“As the CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, the buck stops with me – and I took the decision to offer my resignation to the Director-General last night.

“In public life leaders need to be fully accountable, and that is why I am stepping down.”