BBC Director-General Tim Davie and BBC News Chief Executive Deborah Turness announced Sunday they are resigning from their positions. <\/p>\n
The departures come as the British public broadcaster has faced criticism for its editing of President Trump\u2019s Jan. 6, 2021, speech before the Capitol riot<\/a> and insurrection. <\/p>\n The BBC investigative series \u201cPanorama,\u201d in a broadcast a week ahead of the U.S. presidential election last year, featured an edited video of Trump\u2019s speech. <\/p>\n Critics said that the way the speech was edited was misleading in that it cut out a section in which Trump said that he expected his supporters would demonstrate peacefully.<\/p>\n \u201cI know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,\u201d Trump said in the speech, during which he also urged his supporters to \u201cfight like hell.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement, Turness acknowledged the controversy around the \u201cPanorama\u201d broadcast, noting, \u201cIn public life leaders need to be fully accountable, and that is why I am stepping down. While mistakes have been made, I want to be absolutely clear recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n In a separate news release, Davie said, \u201cIn these increasingly polarized times, the BBC is of unique value and speaks to the very best of us. It helps make the UK a special place; overwhelmingly kind, tolerant and curious. Like all public organizations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent and accountable. <\/p>\n \u201cWhile not being the only reason, the current debate around BBC News has understandably contributed to my decision. Overall the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made and as Director-General I have to take ultimate responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump posted a link to a Daily Telegraph story about the speech-editing on his Truth Social network, thanking the newspaper \u201cfor exposing these Corrupt \u2018Journalists.\u2019 These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election.\u201d He called that \u201ca terrible thing for Democracy!\u201d<\/p>\n White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reacted on X, posting a screen grab of an article headlined \u201cTrump goes to war with \u2018fake news\u2019 BBC\u201d beside another about Davie\u2019s resignation, with the words \u201cshot\u201d and \u201cchaser.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump was impeached and criminally indicted over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and insurrection. The felony charges were dropped after he won the 2024 election, as U.S. Justice Department policy holds that a sitting president may not be criminally prosecuted. <\/p>\n Pressure on the broadcaster\u2019s top executives has been growing since the Daily Telegraph newspaper published parts of a dossier complied by Michael Prescott, who had been hired to advise the BBC on standards and guidelines.<\/p>\n As well as the Trump edit, it criticized the BBC\u2019s coverage of transgender issues and raised concerns of anti-Israel bias in the BBC\u2019s Arabic service.<\/p>\n The 103-year-old BBC faces greater scrutiny than other broadcasters \u2014 and criticism from its commercial rivals \u2014 because of its status as a national institution funded through an annual license fee of $230 paid by all households with a television.<\/p>\n The BBC airs vast reams of entertainment and sports programming across multiple television and radio stations and online platforms \u2014 but it\u2019s the BBC\u2019s news output that is most often under scrutiny.<\/p>\n The broadcaster is bound by the terms of its charter to be impartial in its output, and critics are quick to point out when they think it has failed. It\u2019s frequently a political football, with conservatives seeing a leftist slant in its news output and some liberals accusing it of having a conservative bias.<\/p>\n It has also been criticized from all angles over its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. In February, the BBC removed a documentary about Gaza from its streaming service after it emerged that the child narrator was the son of an official in the Hamas-led government.<\/p>\n The BBC shakeup comes as Trump has been extremely aggressive in pursuing lawsuits against U.S. media companies. Paramount Global forked over $16 million<\/a> this summer after Trump complained about the editing of a Kamala Harris interview on CBS\u2019 \u201c60 minutes.\u201d Last year, ABC News paid $16 million<\/a> to settle Trump\u2019s defamation lawsuit against anchor George Stephanopoulos. <\/p>\n The Associated Press contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BBC Director-General Tim Davie and BBC News Chief Executive Deborah Turness announced Sunday they are resigning from their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[30118,30122,30120,20381,7366,30121,4004,30125,30124,48,52,51,47,50,49,30123,26593,3020,4509,1519,30119],"class_list":["post-45861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bbc","tag-bbc-news-leader","tag-broadcaster","tag-coverage","tag-criticism","tag-editing","tag-gaza","tag-great-scrutiny","tag-insurrection","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-news-output","tag-panorama","tag-president-trump","tag-television","tag-trump","tag-trump-speech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}