The Director-General of the BBC, Tim Davie, has resigned amid controversy surrounding the editing of a Panorama documentary about U.S. President Donald Trump.
Davie stepped down alongside the broadcaster’s Head of News, Deborah Turness, following accusations that the programme had misleadingly edited a portion of Trump’s speech, sparking widespread criticism over journalistic integrity.
In a statement published on the BBC’s website on Sunday, Davie said:
“Like all public organisations, the BBC is not perfect. We must always strive to be open, transparent, and accountable. While this is not the sole reason for my resignation, the ongoing debate around BBC News has understandably influenced my decision. As Director-General, I must take ultimate responsibility.”
The latest controversy follows a Daily Telegraph report this week that said concerns were first raised in the summer in a memo on impartiality by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee.
Earlier Sunday, the UK Culture, Media and Sport Minister Lisa Nandy called the allegations “incredibly serious”.
The BBC has promised “a full response” to Parliament’s culture, media, and sport committee on Monday.
Nandy said the Trump edit was one of several concerns about editorial standards at the BBC.“It isn’t just about the Panorama programme, although that is incredibly serious,” she told BBC television in an interview.“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 said.
Nandy said 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 entitled “Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone”, broadcast in February.
In October, it accepted a sanction from the UK media watchdog for what was deemed a “materially misleading” programme, whose child narrator was later revealed to be the son of Hamas’s former deputy agriculture minister.AFP
