YESTERDAY EVENING, THE BBC announced that its director general Tim Davie and chief executive of news Deborah Turness had resigned from their roles.

Their resignations followed criticism over a misleading edit made to a speech by Donald Trump in a documentary following his loss in the US presidential election in 2020.

Trump: A Second Chance? was created as part of the broadcaster’s long-running documentary series Panorama. The documentary aired on BBC One at the end of October last year, just before Trump’s November win in the 2024 election. 

The description of the episode reads: “For the past two years, Panorama has been following some of Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters. They tell Panorama why they want Trump, now a convicted felon, to get a second chance in the White House, while experts analyse his continued appeal.”

It examined elements of Trump’s previous presidential term and included fragments of speeches he had made. 

In the documentary, some of Trump’s speech to a rally of his supporters before the storming of Capitol Hill on January 6 was shown. Trump had told supporters that the election was stolen from him and encouraged those present to march in protest to the Capitol.

In the BBC edit, sections were spliced together to show Trump saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”

However, although Trump had said the above in different parts of his speech, the edit in the Panorama documentary crucially removed Trump saying that upon arriving at the Capitol, they would “cheer on” political representatives present.

In actuality, he had said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

The edit was said to be misleading and falsely made it appear that Trump had explicitly encouraged the riots at Capitol Hill.

As violence grew at Capitol Hill and a rioter was shot by police, Trump posted a message on social media acknowledging people’s “hurt” at the election loss but said peace had to be restored, telling rioters to “go home”.

He was later charged with plotting to overturn his election loss. All four counts he was accused of were dismissed by a federal judge in November 2024. He was also successfully impeached by the House of Representatives for incitement of insurrection but was later cleared by the Senate.

Although the documentary aired more than a year ago, the resignations come now after The Telegraph reported on an internal memo by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee.

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The memo raised concerns in the summer about the way the offending clips were spliced together.

In a statement by the director general announcing his departure, Davie said: “Overall the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made and as Director-General I have to take ultimate responsibility.”

Trump welcomed the resignations yesterday and claimed there had been an attempt to “step on the scales of a presidential election”, adding: “What a terrible thing for Democracy!”

The chairman of the BBC Samir Shah has apologised for the decision to edit the material in such a way.

The broadcaster has been rocked by numerous failings this year. Among them are the broadcasting of Bob Vylan’s controversial Glastonbury set, misconduct allegations against MasterChef presenter Gregg Wallace, and its airing of a documentary on the war in Gaza that was narrated by the son of a Hamas official.

Leading politicians in the UK said the BBC must work to rebuild its reputation.