BBC brass out after Trump speech edit

LONDON The head of the BBC and the British broadcaster s top news executive both resigned Sunday after criticism of the way the organization edited a speech by U S President Donald Trump The BBC stated Director-General Tim Davie and news CEO Deborah Turness had both decided to leave the corporation Britain s publicly funded national broadcaster has been criticized for editing a speech Trump made on Jan before protesters attacked the Capitol in Washington Critics explained that the way the speech was edited for a BBC documentary last year was misleading and cut out a section where Trump revealed that he sought supporters to demonstrate peacefully In a letter to staff Davie declared quitting the job after five years is entirely my decision Overall the BBC is delivering well but there have been particular mistakes made and as director-general I have to take ultimate responsibility Davie commented He mentioned that he was working through exact timings with the Board to allow for an orderly transition to a successor over the coming months Turness explained that the dispute about the Trump documentary has reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC an institution that I love As the CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs the buck stops with me In residents life leaders need to be fully accountable and that is why I am stepping down she noted in a note to staff While mistakes have been made I want to be absolutely clear latest statements that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reacted on X posting a screen grab of an article headlined Trump goes to war with fake news BBC beside another about Davie s resignation with the words shot and chaser Pressure on the broadcaster s top executives has been growing since the Daily Telegraph newspaper published parts of a dossier complied by Michael Prescott who had been hired to advise the BBC on standards and guidelines As well as the Trump edit it criticized the BBC s coverage of transgender issues and raised concerns of anti-Israel bias in the BBC s Arabic arrangement The -year-old BBC faces greater scrutiny than other broadcasters and criticism from its commercial rivals because of its status as a national institution funded through an annual license fee of pounds paid by all households with a television The BBC airs vast reams of entertainment and sports services across multiple television and radio stations and online platforms but it s the BBC s news output that is most of often under scrutiny The broadcaster is bound by the terms of its charter to be impartial in its output and critics are quick to point out when they think it has failed It s frequently a political football with conservatives seeing a leftist slant in its news output and selected liberals accusing it of having a conservative bias It has also been criticized from all angles over its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza In February the BBC removed a documentary about Gaza from its streaming arrangement after it emerged that the child narrator was the son of an official in the Hamas-led executive Kemi Badenoch leader of the opposition Conservative Party explained that the BBC was full of institutional bias and the new leadership must now deliver genuine amendment of the lifestyle of the BBC top to bottom Lisa Nandy the minister in charge of media in Britain s center-left Labour leadership thanked Davie for his work and stated that the ruling body would help the BBC secure its role at the heart of national life for decades to come Now more than ever the need for trusted news and high quality services is essential to our democratic and cultural life and our place in the world Nandy disclosed President Donald Trump AP Photo Evan Vucci