The BBC’s director-general, Tim Davie, and its head of news, Deborah Turness, have resigned from their posts following accusations that the public broadcaster misled viewers by editing remarks made by US President Donald Trump in a documentary that aired last year.
The programme, broadcast in October 2024, combined clips from a speech Trump gave in Washington on 6 January 2021, before the post-election riots that culminated in the storming of the US Capitol.
“The top officials at the BBC, including Tim Davie, are resigning and being fired because they were caught editing my very good, perfect, January 6th speech,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt described the BBC as “a 100% fake news network,” a “leftist propaganda machine,” and “dishonest.”
How was the speech manipulated?
The BBC came under fire for the “Panorama” documentary, titled “Trump: A Second Chance?”, in which the US President’s speech was edited in a way that appeared to show him urging people to attack the Capitol building.
The documentary, which aired a week before the presidential election, made it seem as though Trump told his supporters: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… I’ll be with you, and we fight like hell… until the end.”
In reality, Trump had said, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
The two original clips in the speech were separated by more than 50 minutes. The phrase “we fight like hell” was from another part of the address, where Trump was talking about how “corrupt” the US election was. In total, he used the word “fight” or its derivatives 20 times in the speech.
What the internal memo said
The Telegraph newspaper in November published an internal BBC memo regarding the editing of Trump’s speech. The manipulated footage was highlighted in a 19-page file on the broadcaster’s bias, prepared by a member of the corporation’s own editorial standards committee.
The internal memo stated that the programme had made the US president “say things he never actually said” by merging footage from the beginning of his speech with a clip from a later part.
In addition to altering Trump’s words, the documentary showed men waving flags and heading towards the Capitol on 6 January 2021, after the president spoke, “creating the impression that Trump’s supporters were responding to his call.” However, the footage was filmed before Trump had even begun his speech. The clips were accompanied by tense music and were presented without any clarification that they had been edited and shown out of chronological order.
“Panorama’s distortion of events was so egregious that viewers would wonder: should the BBC be trusted? And where will this end?” the internal memo stated.
BBC’s reaction
In a statement to BBC staff on Sunday, Davie said his decision to leave was partly due to the recent controversy. “Although it is not the sole reason, the ongoing controversy surrounding BBC News has contributed to my decision,” he said. Davie had worked at the BBC for 20 years and was appointed director-general in 2020.
Deborah Turness has served as the CEO of BBC News since 2022. In her resignation statement, she said: “The ongoing controversy over the Panorama episode about President Trump has reached a point where it is causing damage to the BBC, an institution I love.”
“As the CEO of News, the responsibility lies with me, and I made the decision to submit my resignation to the Director-General last night,” she added.
BBC chairman Samir Shah called it a “sad day” and praised Davie as an “exceptional director-general over the last five years.” British Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy thanked Davie for his “service to public broadcasting,” noting that the BBC is “one of our most important British institutions.”
