Resignations at the top of the BBC following the scandal surrounding the Donald Trump documentary
BBC headquarters in London, Photo: Vuk Valcic-ZUMA / Splash / Profimedia Images
The director general of the BBC, Tim Davie, as well as the head of the news department of the British public broadcaster, Deborah Turness, have announced their resignations, in the context of the scandal regarding the disputed editing of a speech by the American president Donald Trump, informs AFP.
The announcement was made on Sunday evening by the BBC itself.
“It's a sad day for the BBC, Tim has been an excellent director-general for the past five years” but faced “persistent pressure (…) which led him to take this decision” to step down, BBC chairman Samir Shah said in a statement.
The case, revealed on Tuesday by the conservative newspaper The Daily Telegraph, relates to a documentary by the BBC's Panorama news broadcast a week before the US presidential election on November 5, 2024.
The BBC has been accused of editing separate parts of a speech by Donald Trump in such a way that he appears to tell his supporters that he will go to the Capitol with them to “fight like hell”.
In full, he says “we will go to the Capitol and cheer on our brave senators and representatives in Congress,” and the phrase “fight like devils” corresponds to another passage.
Donald Trump, defeated at the polls by the Democrat Joe Biden, but claiming otherwise, gave this speech on January 6, 2021, the day hundreds of his supporters attacked the Congress headquarters in Washington.
