BBC:  BBC director general and News CEO resign over Trump documentary edit

The BBC’s director general Tim Davie and head of News Deborah Turness have resigned following criticism that a Panorama documentary misled viewers by editing a speech by Donald Trump.

The Telegraph published details of a leaked internal BBC memo on Monday that suggested the Panorama programme edited two parts of the US president’s speech together so he appeared to explicitly encourage the Capitol Hill riot of January 2021.

This dishonest BBC documentary aired in October, just prior to the 2024 election.  A foreign country tried to influence who was elected as our president.

The problem isn’t hard to spot.

She said: “In 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.”

Turness has been CEO of News and Current Affairs for the past three years.

That obviously can’t be true.  Turness is resigning because the BBC is institutionally biased and acts on that bias.

The internal memo published by the Telegraph also raised concerns about a lack of action to address what it described as “systemic problems” of bias in BBC Arabic’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war. 

The leaked memo was written by Michael Prescott, a former independent external adviser to the broadcaster’s editorial standards committee, who left the role in June.

Only 38% of British voters trust the BBC to tell the truth.  The BBC is funded by a sweet deal.  Every household in the UK must pay a $230 annual fee to legally watch television.

The BBC board is responsible for appointing a director general under the terms of its Charter.

But whoever replaces Davie and Turness will have to step straight into dealing with a series of critical news reports.

The board could appoint Michael Prescott, the man who wrote the memo that documented BBC’s bias.  They won’t do that because that might fix the problem.