Tim Davie in 2022. The top BBC executive resigned Sunday.Hannah McKay/The Associated Press
The BBC has been thrown into turmoil by two resignations, after its director-general and the head of its news division both stepped down Sunday over allegations of bias in the British broadcaster’s coverage of U.S. President Donald Trump, the war in Gaza and race and gender issues.
Tim Davie announced that he was leaving as director-general after five years in the post.
“Like all public organizations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent and accountable. While not being the only reason, the current debate around BBC News has understandably contributed to my decision,” he said in a statement.
Deborah Turness, who has been chief executive officer of BBC News since 2022, 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.” She added: “The buck stops with me.”
Deborah Turness said on Monday that 'there was no institutional bias.'
Reuters
The BBC has been under growing pressure for days after a leaked internal memo from Michael Prescott, an adviser to the BBC’s standards committee who left the role in June and wrote the memo over the summer. In it, he 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, which 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 at a rally near the White House to violence.
“We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you and we fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore,” Mr. Trump said in the spliced version of his comments that aired on 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 coverage of issues related to racism and alleged that “the BBC fell too easily for putting out ill-researched material that suggested issues of racism when there were none.”
On gender stories, he added, “the LGBTQ desk staffers would decline to cover any story raising difficult questions about the trans-debate.”
Reuters
He was also highly critical of reporting about the war in Gaza by the BBC’s Arabic service. His memo alleged there were widespread differences between how Hamas and Israel were covered by BBC Arabic and by the main BBC News website. The Arabic news website often played down Hamas atrocities while highlighting reports that were critical of Israel, the memo alleged.
Mr. Prescott concluded his memo by saying: “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, seized on the memo last week after it was published in the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday. She described the BBC as “100-per-cent fake news” and a “propaganda machine.”
On Sunday, Mr. Trump welcomed the resignations. “Thank you to The Telegraph for exposing these Corrupt ‘Journalists.’ These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election,” he said in a post on his Truth Social platform. “On top of everything else, they are from a Foreign Country, one that many consider our Number One Ally. What a terrible thing for Democracy!”
The BBC’s chair, Samir Shah, is expected to issue an apology for the Panorama program to the culture, media and sport committee of the House of Commons on Monday. “This is a sad day for the BBC,” he said after the resignations were announced.
Mr. Davie, who spent 20 years at the corporation after working as a vice-president of marketing at PepsiCo Europe, defended the BBC in his statement Sunday. “It 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,” he said.
In her statement, Ms. Turness also defended the broadcaster and said that while mistakes had been made, “I want to be absolutely clear recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong.”
Some opposition politicians called for sweeping changes at the BBC and said the resignations were not enough. “The Prescott report exposed institutional bias that cannot be swept away with two resignations – strong action must be taken on all the issues it raised," Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch wrote on X. “The culture at the BBC has not yet changed.”
Britain’s Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, thanked Mr. Davie for his service. But she had also been critical of the corporation earlier on Sunday.
“What tends to happen at the BBC is that decisions about editorial standards, editorial guidelines, the sort of language that is used in reporting, is entirely inconsistent,” Ms. Nandy said during an appearance on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg program.
The BBC’s 13-member board will begin a search for a new director-general, who will be responsible for delivering the corporate mission and public service obligations outlined in the Royal Charter, the constitutional basis for the broadcaster.
The BBC employs around 21,300 people across 31 television and radio services.