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After days of pressure, two top executives quit after a memo by a former adviser said that the public broadcaster had misleadingly edited a speech by President Trump.
Nov. 10, 2025Updated 9:03 a.m. ET
The BBC, one of the world’s biggest broadcasters, has been plunged into crisis after two of its top executives quit following a leaked memo suggesting that it had misleadingly edited a speech by President Trump that preceded the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
The departures on Sunday of the executives — Tim Davie, the director general, and Deborah Turness, the head of news — left the BBC in turmoil, while the White House was celebrating.
Here’s what to know.
What was the central criticism against the BBC?
A highly critical memo, written by a former external adviser to the BBC board, Michael Prescott, said that a documentary called “Trump: A Second Chance?”, broadcast before the presidential election last year, at one point spliced together footage from comments that Mr. Trump made about 50 minutes apart. In his speech on Jan. 6 to supporters in Washington as Congress was certifying the results that showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won the election, Mr. Trump said, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.”
But the documentary cut that together with a later quote, so that the edited version suggested that he had said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol … and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
The documentary is no longer available to watch on the BBC’s online player.
What else was in the critical report and who wrote it?
The memo’s writer, Mr. Prescott, is a former political editor of The Sunday Times of London, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
In 2001, Mr. Prescott moved into corporate communications and public relations, where he has spent the past two and a half decades.
In 2022, he was appointed as an independent external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee. He left that role in June and wrote the memo, which is addressed to board members, after his departure. As well as the documentary about Mr. Trump, Mr. Prescott’s wide-ranging memo criticizes the BBC’s handling of stories about transgender rights; Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza; and its BBC Arabic division, which gave a platform to a journalist who had posted antisemitic comments.
Who is Tim Davie and why did he resign?
As director general, Mr. Davie has for five years held one of the toughest positions in British public life, ultimately responsible not just for the BBC’s news coverage with a global reach, but also for its vast other output, including drama series and sports, and for the conduct of star performers.
The BBC, or British Broadcasting Corporation, has a unique status in Britain. It is funded primarily from an annual license fee paid by households that watch TV, supplemented by commercial revenue, and it has a mandate to “act in the public interest,” providing “impartial, high-quality” content that informs, educates and entertains.
That ambitious goal puts its boss firmly in the spotlight. While the corporation is not funded by the government, Parliament does oversee the level of the license fee paid by TV viewers in Britain, and as a result, the BBC has for many years come under political pressure from all sides.
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The surprise resignations of Mr. Davie and Ms. Turness appear to have been catalyzed by the leak to The Daily Telegraph of Mr. Prescott’s memo and by the days of public pressure that followed.
In Mr. Davie’s resignation statement on Sunday, he said: “While not being the only reason, the current debate around BBC News has understandably contributed to my decision. Overall the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made and as director general I have to take ultimate responsibility.”
Ms. Turness said, “The ongoing controversy around the Panorama on President Trump has reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC — an institution that I love.” But she added, “While mistakes have been made, I want to be absolutely clear recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong.”
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What happens next?
Mr. Davie’s successor will be appointed by the BBC board, which is led by its chairman, Samir Shah, and consists of 10 nonexecutive members (including Mr. Shah) and four executive members.
Mr. Davie, announcing his departure, said that he was “working through exact timings with the board to allow for an orderly transition to a successor over the coming months.” The aim, he added, was to allow his successor “the best conditions and space” to help shape a new royal charter, the document that lays out the governance and regulatory rules for the BBC, and another agreement on the corporation’s funding. The current arrangements expire at the end of 2027.
Stephen Castle is a London correspondent of The Times, writing widely about Britain, its politics and the country’s relationship with Europe.
