The director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation announced his resignation Sunday following a row over the editing of a documentary about US President Donald Trump.
Tim Davie and the BBC’s head of news, Deborah Turness, resigned after accusations that a documentary by its flagship Panorama programme edited a speech by Trump in a misleading way.
“Like all public organisations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent and accountable,” Davie said in a statement posted on the BBC website.
“While not being the only reason, the current debate around BBC News has understandably contributed to my decision… I have to take ultimate responsibility.”
Davie’s departure comes a week after The Sunday Telegraph leaked an internal memo raising concerns about the documentary.
Earlier Sunday, the UK Culture, Media and Sport Minister Lisa Nandy described the allegations as “incredibly serious”.
Meanwhile, a UK government minister on Sunday described as “incredibly serious” allegations over the way the BBC edited clips of US President Donald Trump in a flagship documentary programme.
The comments by Culture, Media and Sport Minister Lisa Nandy came as the broadcaster said its chair Samir Shah would provide an explanation to a parliamentary committee on Monday.
Media outlets, including the BBC, reported Sunday that the response was expected to include an apology.
The concerns regard clips spliced together from sections of the US president’s speech on January 6, 2021 that made it appear he told supporters he was going to walk to the US Capitol with them and “fight like hell”.
In the undoctored clip, however, the president urged the audience to walk with him “and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women”.
At the time, Trump was still disputing President Joe Biden’s election victory, in the vote which saw him ousted after his first term in office.
“The BBC chairman will provide a full response to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Monday,” a BBC spokesperson said.
The edit was included in a documentary entitled “Trump: A Second Chance?”, which was broadcast by the BBC the week before last year’s US election.
– ‘Bias’ allegation –
Nandy said the Trump edit was one of a number of concerns about editorial standards at the BBC.
“It isn’t just about the Panorama programme, although that is incredibly serious, there are a series of very serious allegations made, the most serious of which is that there is systemic bias in the way that difficult issues are reported at the BBC,” she told BBC television in an interview.
Nandy added that she was concerned about a tendency for editorial standards and the language used in reports to be “entirely inconsistent” whether it be on “Israel, Gaza… trans people or on this issue about President Trump”.
The licence fee-funded broadcaster earlier this year issued several apologies for “serious flaws” in the making of another documentary, “Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone”, broadcast in February.
In October it accepted a sanction from the UK media watchdog for the “materially misleading” programme whose child narrator was later revealed to be the son of Hamas’s former deputy minister of agriculture.
