“Tim Davey said in a statement that “some mistakes were made and as CEO I have to take full responsibility.””, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
Tim Davey and the BBC’s head of news, Deborah Terness, have resigned following allegations that a documentary on the flagship Panorama program edited Trump’s speech in a way that misled viewers.
“Overall the BBC is doing well, but some mistakes have been made and as director general I must take full responsibility,” Davey said in a statement.
Terness said the “long-running controversy” surrounding the documentary had “reached a stage where it is damaging the BBC”. She stated that “all the responsibility lies with me.”
“While mistakes have been made, I want to make it absolutely clear that recent allegations of institutional bias against BBC News are false,” she added.
The resignations came after The Telegraph newspaper published details of a leaked internal BBC memo which claimed the program had edited two parts of Trump’s speech to make it appear as if he had directly called for riots in the Capitol in January 2021.
The leaked memo came from Michael Prescott, a former independent outside adviser to the broadcaster’s editorial standards committee. He left this position in June.
Prescott raised concerns about the documentary Trump: Second Chance?, which aired last year and was made for the BBC by independent production company October Films Ltd, which was also approached for comment.
On Sunday, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said a number of “very serious allegations” had been made against the broadcaster, “the most serious of which is that there is a systemic bias in the coverage of difficult issues at the BBC”.
White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt reacted to the resignation of Tim Davey and Deborah Terness. On social network X, she posted two screenshots of news articles side by side – over the first screenshot of the Telegraph article with the headline: “Trump declares war on BBC ‘fake news'” she wrote the word “shot” and also “stalker” – over a screenshot of the BBC News report about the resignation of Tim Davey.