BBC faces crisis as top chiefs resign over Trump speech editing

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
10 Nov 2025 15:29

The BBC faces a crisis after editing a Trump speech, prompting the resignations of its director-general and news chief ahead of a charter review.

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The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Headquarters in London, England, the United Kingdom, on November 10, 2025. (AP)

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was expected to issue a public apology on Monday after a political storm erupted over a misleadingly edited clip of a Donald Trump speech, a controversy that has led to the shock resignations of Director-General Tim Davie and BBC News CEO Deborah Turness.

The resignations came late on Sunday amid escalating outrage that edits to Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech in a flagship BBC documentary suggested he had directly instigated the attack on the US Capitol.

The broadcaster has been accused of deliberately altering the footage in a way that misrepresented Trump’s words.

BBC chair Samir Shah was scheduled to appear before Parliament’s Culture, Media, and Sport Committee on Monday to explain how the edits were approved and to outline steps the corporation will take to restore trust.

Trump celebrated the resignations, accusing the broadcaster of bias and misconduct. “BBC journalists are corrupt and dishonest,” he said in a statement posted on his social media platform Truth Social.

Turness, however, rejected such accusations in her resignation note, writing that “allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong.”

The resignations come at a politically delicate time for the British broadcaster, as the government prepares to review its royal charter, the document that defines the BBC’s governance and funding structure, before its renewal in 2027.

The BBC, which relies on a mandatory licence fee from UK households, has also been struggling with financial strain and significant staff cuts in recent years. Former BBC journalist and academic Karen Fowler-Watt told AFP that the resignations marked a defining moment for the broadcaster.

“What’s happened overnight here is seismic and I don’t think we should be underestimating that,” she said, underlining: "The institution is now really in a situation of crisis."

Political fallout

UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy described the bias allegations as “incredibly serious,” urging transparency from the BBC’s leadership.

Reactions across the political spectrum highlighted deep divisions over the broadcaster’s credibility and independence. Some viewed the resignations as necessary accountability, while others warned of political pressure from right-wing figures in the UK and the United States. “It’s very difficult not to see this as a right-wing attack, given the media ecosystem in which we all now live,” Fowler-Watt added.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced he would stop paying his BBC licence fee, while Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch welcomed the resignations following what she called a “catalogue of serious failures.”

By contrast, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey urged Prime Minister Keir Starmer to defend the broadcaster, saying, “It’s easy to see why Trump wants to destroy the world’s number one news source. We can’t let him.”

Editing controversy

The current crisis stems from reporting by the Daily Telegraph, which revealed that an internal memo by former external standards adviser Michael Prescott had raised concerns about the impartiality of a BBC documentary on Trump’s presidency.

The controversy centered on an edited section of Trump’s January 6 speech. The programme spliced together different segments to make it appear that the American president told supporters he would “walk to the US Capitol” with them and “fight like hell.”

In the unedited version, Trump had urged his audience to “walk to the US Capitol” and “cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

Davie, nicknamed “Teflon Tim” for his ability to withstand previous controversies, could not survive this latest scandal.