Two top BBC leaders resigned Sunday following criticism over the way a documentary edited a speech by President Trump on Jan. 6 and other matters raised in a leaked internal memo.
Why it matters: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and others accused the public service broadcaster of dishonesty following the leak to the Telegraph of the memo that raised concerns about impartiality and called the edited Trump clip in the BBC "Panorama" documentary "misleading."
- Trump and Leavitt both welcomed Sunday's resignations of BBC director-general Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness after it emerged former BBC adviser Michael Prescott accused the outlet in the memo of "serious and systemic" bias over a range of issues, including "Panorama" splicing together sections of Trump's speech.
Driving the news: Davie said in his resignation letter the decision to step down from the British Broadcasting Corporation's top role after five years was "entirely" his and that "overall, the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made and as director-general I have to take ultimate responsibility."
- Turness said in her resignation letter the "ongoing controversy" around the Trump documentary "has reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC."
- The former NBC News International president added that as the CEO of BBC News and current affairs, "the buck stops with me."
What they're saying: "The TOP people in the BBC, including TIM DAVIE, the BOSS, are all quitting/FIRED, because they were caught 'doctoring' my very good (PERFECT!) speech of January 6th," Trump said on Truth Social Sunday afternoon.
- He thanked the Telegraph for its reporting and added: "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!"
- Leavitt, who accused the BBC in the Telegraph on Friday of being "purposefully dishonest," shared on X Sunday screenshots of both her reported remarks and Davie's resignation with the comment: "Shot: … Chaser."
What we're watching: The BBC was expected to issue an apology on Monday over the editing of Trump's speech.
Context: The "Panorama" documentary "Trump: A Second Chance?" aired a week before last year's U.S. presidential election and featured excerpts of the president's 2021 speech to supporters.
- Sections of Trump's speech made over more than 50 minutes apart were edited together to quote him saying: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol ... and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell."
Of note: The full quote of the first part of Trump's speech complaining about the 2021 election that the BBC featured was: "It is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we're going to walk down, and I'll be there with you, we're going to walk down, we're going to walk down.
- "Anyone you want, but I think right here, we're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them."
- Over 50 minutes later, while speaking about "election security," Trump said: "We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."
Zoom in: Per the Telegraph, Prescott said in the leaked memo this "distortion of the day's events" would leave viewers asking: "If BBC journalists are to be allowed to edit video in order to make people 'say' things they never actually said, then what value are the Corporation's guidelines, why should the BBC be trusted, and where will this all end?"
Zoom out: The BBC is the world's oldest broadcaster and employs some 21,000 staff as it produces news, entertainment and sports content for TV and online.
- It receives most of its revenue from a license fee paid for by people who watch TV in the U.K. and its charter requires it to produce impartial content, and it's been accused of bias by people on the left and right of politics in recent years.
- Critics' calls for the license fee to be reformed or abolished have grown in recent days and former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared on X Friday that he "won't be paying" his license fee until "Davie either comes clean" on the edit or resigns.
- Ed Davey, leader of Britain's centrist Liberal Democrat party, wrote on X Sunday that "It's easy to see why Trump wants to destroy the world's number one news source," adding that the prime minister and political leaders "should be united in telling Trump to keep his hands off it."
Go deeper: BBC overhauls American website amid broader overseas push
Editor's note: This article has been updated with additional details throughout.
