The scandal over the BBC’s alleged bias in a documentary about the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has finally led to the departure of the general director of the British public corporation, Tim Davie, and the head of the news branch, Deborah Turness. This Sunday, for what Davie has described as “errors made” in the editing of a speech by the president of the United States shortly before the riots broke out at the Washington Capitol in January 2021. As Davie admitted in his resignation statement, as the top person in charge of the corporation, he has to “assume the ultimate responsibility.”
Controversy had erupted earlier in the week, when an independent advisor expressed serious reservations about the documentary Trump, second chance?issued last year. Specifically, the criticism affected a segment that contained a speech in which, due to how it had been edited, the Republican seemed to explicitly encourage altercations, in which five people died and there were more than 300 arrests.
The White House had already reacted with fury to the documentary, made by the company October Films for the Panorama program, accusing the BBC of “100% fake news.” It was expected that this Monday the president of the corporation would publicly apologize for the ruling, but the pressure was becoming unbearable for the network’s leadership, which had already been under pressure for months for coverage such as the Gaza conflict, for an alleged bias against Israel, especially in the Arabic division, or the debate around the rights of the transsexual collective.
