BBC expected to apologise over Trump row after two chiefs resign

The BBC was expected Monday to apologise for editing a speech that suggested Donald Trump had directly instigated an attack on the US Capitol, prompting the dramatic resignations of the broadcaster’s top brass.

Director general Tim Davie and BBC News CEO Deborah Turness stepped down Sunday after growing furore that BBC edits to Trump’s speech in one of its flagship documentary programmes were deliberately misleading.

BBC chair Samir Shah was due to give an explanation Monday to parliament’s culture media and sport committee.

While Trump celebrated the resignations, accusing BBC journalists of being “corrupt” and “dishonest”, Turness insisted in her leaving note that “allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong”.

The departures come as the government prepares to begin a politically sensitive review of the BBC’s charter, which outlines the corporation’s governance and funding framework. The current charter ends in 2027.

The BBC, which has faced a prolonged period of stretched finances and cut hundreds of jobs in recent years, is funded by a licence fee paid by anyone who watches live TV in the UK.

Former BBC journalist Karen Fowler-Watt, head of the journalism department at City St George’s University, told AFP the institution was “now really in a situation of crisis”.

“What’s happened overnight here is seismic and I don’t think we should be underestimating that,” she said, adding the broadcaster could not allow its globally trusted brand to be further tarnished.

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‘Incredibly serious’ allegations

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has called the allegations of bias “incredibly serious”.

While some welcomed the resignations as a timely reckoning for the British institution — which has long faced criticism from the political right and left — others feared the influence of right-wing detractors, including in the United States.

Fowler-Watt noted it was “very difficult not to see this as a right-wing attack, given the media ecosystem in which we all now live”.

Former conservative prime minister Boris Johnson has threatened to stop paying his licence fee, while current Tory party leader Kemi Badenoch welcomed the resignations following a “catalogue of serious failures”.

But Ed Davey, leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats, urged Prime Minister Keir Starmer to tell Trump to “keep his hands off” the BBC.

“It’s easy to see why Trump wants to destroy the world’s number one news source,” he said. “We can’t let him.”

Jimmy, who works in construction and declined to give his surname, told AFP he believed the BBC’s reputation had been “tarnished”.

“You rely on the BBC for impartiality and I think the past year they’ve shown that they’re not impartial,” he said.

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But 78-year-old writer Jennifer Kavanagh said it has “always been attacked from the right and from the left”.

“They can never get it right,” said Kavanagh, adding that she “loved” the broadcaster and hoped that “this settles down”.

Controversies

It could take months to find a replacement for Davie, who earned the nickname “Teflon Tim” for his ability to survive scandals.

But he was unable to ride out the latest controversy, which built after the Daily Telegraph reported last week that impartiality concerns were raised in an internal memo by Michael Prescott, a former external standards adviser.

Among them was criticism over clips spliced together from sections of Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021, when he was accused of fomenting the mob attack on the US Capitol following the 2020 presidential election.

The edit made it appear that he had 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 in the intervening period to walk with him “and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women”.

Earlier this year, the BBC apologised for “serious flaws” in the making of another documentary, about Gaza, which the UK’s media watchdog deemed “materially misleading”.

It also faced criticism for failing to pull a livestream of punk-rap duo Bob Vylan during this year’s Glastonbury festival after its frontman made anti-Israel comments.

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