BBC Director-General Tim Davie and BBC News Chief Executive Deborah Turness have resigned following a firestorm over the broadcaster’s editing of President Donald Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech — a controversy that compounded allegations of systemic bias raised in a recently leaked internal memo.

The resignations, confirmed Sunday by the BBC and multiple international outlets, came after a Panorama documentary was found to have edited two separate parts of Trump’s address together so that it appeared he was explicitly encouraging the Capitol riot. The original speech included a call for protesters to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” which was omitted in the televised version, leaving only the later line, “we fight like hell.”

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In a statement released through the BBC, Davie said that while the network remained “a gold standard of journalism,” the “current debate around BBC News” had contributed to his decision to step down. Turness said the controversy had “reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC,” adding that “the buck stops with me.”

Their simultaneous departure marks the first time in BBC history that both its top executive and head of news have resigned on the same day.

The Panorama controversy follows the publication of a 19-page memo written by former BBC adviser Michael Prescott, which alleged years of “systemic bias and activist journalism” within the broadcaster, particularly in its coverage of the 2023–24 Israel–Hamas war.

The document, published in full by The Telegraph, claimed the network’s Arabic-language service repeatedly aired contributors who expressed antisemitic views and downplayed Israeli suffering. Among the disclosures:

  • One commentator, Samer Elzaenen, who reportedly called for Jews to be burned “as Hitler did,” appeared on BBC Arabic 244 times between November 2023 and April 2025.
  • Another, Ahmad Alagha, described Jews as “devils” and Israelis as “less than human”; he appeared 522 times during the same period.
  • The memo also alleged that Newsnight, the BBC’s flagship current-affairs program, aired claims that “thousands of babies” were on the brink of starvation in Gaza — reports the network allegedly knew to be false.

Former BBC Television Director Danny Cohen called the memo a “devastating document” exposing “serious and widespread failings of impartiality” and “groupthink” within the corporation.

Media-monitoring organizations including CAMERA and HonestReporting said the findings confirm long-standing concerns about bias in the BBC’s coverage of Israel. “Bias kills,” said HonestReporting Executive Director Gil Hoffman, emphasizing that alleged anti-Israel narratives within the BBC “weren’t a mistake — they were policy.”

The BBC has also faced criticism for separate editorial lapses, including a broadcast from the Glastonbury music festival in which performers chanted “death to the IDF,” and for failing to disclose that the narrator of a Gaza documentary was the son of a Hamas official.

The BBC Board is now expected to begin the process of appointing Davie’s successor ahead of a scheduled Royal Charter renewal in 2027.