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BBC resignations over a Trump speech edit show the high cost of editorial mistakes in a polarized era

The head of the BBC and the organization's news CEO both have stepped down after a controversy involving the editing of a speech by President Donald Trump. The speech in question? The one Trump gave on Jan. 6, 2021 — the day Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol.

BBC director-general Tim Davie and BBC News CEO Deborah Turness announced they would leave the publicly funded national broadcaster because of the way Trump’s speech was edited for an episode of the documentary series “Panorama.” The episode was called “Trump: A Second Chance?” and it aired just before last year’s election.

The Associated Press’ Jill Lawless wrote, “Critics said that the way the speech was edited for a BBC documentary last year was misleading and cut out a section where Trump said that he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.”

Davie, who had been in his position for five years, told staff in a note that the decision to leave was “entirely my decision.” He added, “Overall the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made and as director-general I have to take ultimate responsibility.”

Meanwhile, Turness told staff in a note that the controversy from the Trump documentary “has reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC — an institution that I love. As the CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, the buck stops with me.”

She added, “In public life leaders need to be fully accountable, and that is why I am stepping down. While mistakes have been made, I want to be absolutely clear (that) recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong.”

The Trump administration wasted no time gloating about the resignations. On Truth Social, Trump wrote, “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 thanked The  Daily Telegraph in the United Kingdom for its story last week: “BBC doctored Trump speech, internal report reveals.”

The New York Times’ Stephen Castle wrote, “Mr. Davie’s surprise resignation came several days after The Daily Telegraph published details of a leaked internal memo arguing that a BBC Panorama documentary had juxtaposed comments by the president in a way that made it appear that he had explicitly encouraged the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.”

Trump wrote, “Thank you to The Telegraph for exposing these Corrupt ‘Journalists.’ These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election. 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!”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tweeted, “.@BBCNews is dying because they are anti-Trump Fake News. Everyone should watch @GBNEWS!”

To be clear, the BBC News isn’t “dying,” whatever that means. In addition, GB News in the U.K. generally has a right-wing, conservative bent. 

Leavitt also tweeted out separate stories about the two resignations and wrote “shot” and “chaser.”

It is also noteworthy that the BBC News website itself reported the controversy over the Trump story. It might have simply been the final straw. The BBC’s Aleks Phillips and Helen Bushby wrote, “Davie, who has been in the job for five years, had faced increasing pressure over a series of controversies and accusations of bias that have dogged the public broadcaster.”

They added, “UK political leaders expressed hope the resignations would lead to change, while Trump welcomed the decision.”

The Los Angeles Times’ Mark Olsen wrote, “Pressure on the broadcaster’s top executives has been growing since the Daily Telegraph newspaper published parts of a dossier complied by Michael Prescott, who had been hired to advise the BBC on standards and guidelines. As well as the Trump edit, it criticized the BBC’s coverage of transgender issues and raised concerns of anti-Israel bias in the BBC’s Arabic service. The 103-year-old BBC faces greater scrutiny than other broadcasters — and criticism from its commercial rivals — because of its status as a national institution funded through an annual license fee of $230 paid by all households with a television.”

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So what happened?

How, exactly, was Trump’s speech edited?

In his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump told his supporters, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women."

In the Panorama edit, Trump said, “We're going to walk down to the Capitol … and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”

As Phillips and Bushby noted in their story for the BBC, “The two sections that were stitched together were originally more than 50 minutes apart.”

Phillips and Bushby wrote, “The pair's resignations come ahead of a statement expected on Monday by BBC chairman Samir Shah to a parliamentary committee in which he was anticipated to apologise for the way the speech was edited. Commenting on the resignations on Sunday, Shah said it was a ‘sad day for the BBC’ and that Davie ‘had the full support of me and the (BBC) board throughout’ his tenure.”

“However,” Shah continued, “I understand the continued pressure on him, personally and professionally, which has led him to take this decision today. The whole board respects the decision and the reasons for it.”

This chapter will, no doubt, amplify the voices of those who believe the BBC has a liberal bias. In Lawless’ story for the AP, Kemi Badenoch, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, said that the BBC was full of “institutional bias,” and “the new leadership must now deliver genuine reform of the culture of the BBC, top to bottom.”

Was the Trump speech edited poorly? Yes, absolutely. Was the edit reckless and/or deceptive enough to cost leaders their job? I would lean toward no, especially because Trump supporters did indeed attack the Capitol following Trump’s speech.

But, in the end, it would appear Davie and Turness believed stepping down was in the best interest of the BBC.

The Post’s ‘tantrum’

I’m not the first one to remember what Adam O’Neal said in a video back in June when he was introduced as the new opinion editor of The Washington Post. Many on social media noted over the weekend that O’Neal said, “We’ll be unapologetically patriotic. … Our philosophy will be rooted in fundamental optimism about the future of this country. What we won’t be are people who lecture you about ideology or demand you think certain ways about policy.”

With that in mind, you can understand why there were plenty of raised eyebrows when the Post’s editorial board wrote on Saturday, “Zohran Mamdani drops the mask.”

Writing about the newly elected New York City mayor, the Post editorial board wrote, “Across 23 angry minutes laced with identity politics and seething with resentment, Mamdani abandoned his cool disposition and made clear that his view of politics isn’t about unity. It isn’t about letting people build better lives for themselves. It is about identifying class enemies — from landlords who take advantage of tenants to ‘the bosses’ who exploit workers — and then crushing them. His goal is not to increase wealth but to dole it out to favored groups. The word ‘growth’ didn’t appear in the speech, but President Donald Trump garnered eight mentions.”

That’s just a sample of an editorial that did seem to have plenty of pessimism and lecturing, and heavily criticized someone who hasn’t even taken office yet.

The comments on the editorial — nearly 7,000 — mostly ripped the Post, with one saying, “I can't believe that the Post published what can only be called a tantrum over Mamdani's win for the people of New York City and loss by the wealthy oligarchs.”

A rare NFL appearance

Donald Trump attended Sunday’s NFL game in Landover, Maryland, between the hometown Washington Commanders and Detroit Lions, and he even spent a few minutes in the Fox Sports’ booth with play-by-play announcer Kenny Albert and analyst Jonathan Vilma.

The broadcasters mostly stuck to sports, although Vilma gave Trump a big opening by asking, “How are we doing as a country?” Trump bragged about how great things were and how he inherited a terrible situation, but his answer was short, and the conversation was mostly politics-free.

By the way, this was surprising: Trump was the first sitting president to attend a regular-season NFL game since Jimmy Carter went to a game in 1978. And, other than Carter, the only other time a sitting U.S. president attended a regular-season NFL game was when Richard Nixon went to a game in 1969.

Speaking of Trump and the NFL, ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. and Adam Schefter reported over the weekend that Trump wants the Commanders to name their planned $3.7 billion stadium after him. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told ESPN, “That would be a beautiful name, as it was President Trump who made the rebuilding of the new stadium possible.”

Trump spent Sunday’s game sitting with Commanders controlling owner Josh Harris.

There would be a lot of hands in the naming of the stadium. As ESPN noted, “That decision would likely rest with the District of Columbia Council, which will lease the stadium to the Commanders, and the National Park Service, which manages the federal government land on the old RFK Stadium site where the new stadium will be built in time for its scheduled opening in 2030.”

Besides, it seems highly unlikely that the stadium would be named after Trump when there is so much money to be made by selling the naming rights to a corporate sponsor.

An important NFL figure passes

Paul Tagliabue, commissioner of the National Football League from 1989 to 2006, has died. He was 84. The cause was heart failure.

Pete Rozelle, who was commissioner from 1960 to 1989, is generally considered the greatest commissioner in the history of the NFL and, arguably, the greatest in all of North American sports. But Tagliabue, who succeeded Rozelle after spending 20 years as the league’s outside legal counsel, also helped the NFL to grow into the most powerful sports league in North America.

The New York Times’ Richard Goldstein and Ken Belson wrote, “Mr. Tagliabue and the N.F.L. reached deals with ABC, CBS, NBC, TNT, ESPN and Fox that brought $4.4 billion in TV rights fees, far outstripping the network revenues earned by Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association at the time.”

The Times added, “The N.F.L. teams also prospered with ambitious marketing ventures and the construction of new stadiums that yielded new revenue from naming rights and luxury suites.”

Minority hiring of coaches improved during Tagliabue’s tenure. However, the one big stain during his time was the handling of players’ safety.

The Times noted, “For years, Mr. Tagliabue and the owners denied there were any lasting risks from concussions. At a panel discussion in 1994, when reporters were beginning to ask questions about players in cognitive decline, Mr. Tagliabue called worries about concussions ‘one of those pack-journalism issues.’ Years later, he apologized for the remark. Mr. Tagliabue created a committee to study brain trauma in 1994, but the group consistently minimized evidence from scientists and physicians that repeated blows to the head could have long-term effects. Many players thought to have sustained concussions in a game were still being allowed to return during the same game, a practice the league’s committee maintained was safe.”

Media tidbits

• Some might ask why the Times is giving this Fox News personality such a platform, but here ya go. It’s The New York Times’ David Marchese with “Fox News Wanted Greg Gutfeld to Do This Interview. He Wasn’t So Sure.”
• The Washington Post’s Laura Wagner and Scott Nover with “Bari Weiss’s first month at CBS News unfolds in a newsroom culture clash.”
• The Guardian’s Jeremy Barr with “Joy Reid on her ouster from MSNBC: ‘In this moment, not being a part of corporate media is a gift.’”
• The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson with “A.I. Sweeps Through Newsrooms, but Is It a Journalist or a Tool?” There is a fun little editor’s note at the top of this story: “This headline and article were written without assistance from generative A.I.”
• NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” has gotten off to an uneven start in its new season, but the show rebounded nicely this past Saturday thanks to a strong effort by host Nikki Glaser, best known for her stand-up comedy career. The Los Angeles Times’ Omar L. Gallaga has a good breakdown: “Nikki Glaser hosts ‘SNL’ for the first time, bringing her boundary-pushing comedy.”
• Awful Announcing’s Drew Lerner with “Mina Kimes ‘deeply embarrassed’ about endorsing shady solitaire app.”

Hot type

• The Washington Post’s Dan Diamond with “Ten seconds in the Oval Office that overshadowed Trump’s drug-price win.”
• Today marks the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior. Twenty-nine men lost their lives. While tragic, it likely would’ve been long forgotten had it not been for Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot and his 1976 hit, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Here’s Fox News’ Mike Kerrigan with “Fifty years after Edmund Fitzgerald claimed 29 lives, Gordon Lightfoot's musical memorial endures.”

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Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected].

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