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The BBC's director general stepped down Sunday after the broadcaster faced allegations it misleadingly edited footage of former President Donald Trump in a documentary about his potential return to power.
Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, the BBC's head of news, both resigned following criticism that the network's investigative program Panorama manipulated a 2021 Trump speech in a way that distorted his words.
"Like all public organisations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent and accountable," Davie said in a statement on the BBC's website. "While not being the only reason, the current debate around BBC News has understandably contributed to my decision... I have to take ultimate responsibility."
The controversy centers on a documentary titled "Trump: A Second Chance?" that aired the week before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. The program spliced together clips from Trump's Jan. 6, 2021, speech — delivered as a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn his election loss to Joe Biden.
The edited version made it appear Trump told the crowd he would walk to the Capitol with them and "fight like hell." But in the full recording, Trump urged supporters to walk with him "and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women."
The editing raised questions about the broadcaster's editorial standards at a time when Trump was disputing Biden's victory and refusing to concede after losing his bid for a second term.
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UK Culture, Media and Sport Minister Lisa Nandy called the allegations "incredibly serious" and said they extended beyond a single documentary. She pointed to what she described as broader concerns about systemic bias in BBC reporting on sensitive topics.
"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," Nandy told BBC television Sunday. She cited inconsistencies in editorial standards and language across coverage of issues including Israel, Gaza, transgender rights and Trump.
According to the Daily Telegraph, concerns about BBC impartiality were first raised in a memo over the summer by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the broadcaster's editorial standards committee.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt shared news of the resignation on social media platform X. She had previously condemned what she called "this purposefully dishonestly, selectively edited clip by the BBC," according to the Telegraph.
The BBC, which is funded through a mandatory license fee paid by UK television viewers, pledged to provide "a full response" to Parliament's culture, media and sport committee Monday.
The resignations come months after the BBC issued multiple apologies for "serious flaws" in another documentary, "Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone," which aired in February. In October, the UK media watchdog sanctioned the broadcaster for what regulators deemed a "materially misleading" program whose child narrator was later revealed to be the son of Hamas's former deputy agriculture minister.
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