Ben Wright and
Chris Graham
EPAThe BBC’s outgoing director general Tim Davie will address staff on Tuesday morning after Donald Trump threatened to sue the corporation for $1bn (£760m) over a Panorama programme.
It follows a leaked internal BBC memo which said the programme had misled viewers by splicing together two parts of the US president’s 6 January 2021 speech, making it appear as if he had explicitly encouraged the Capitol Hill riot.
Trump threatened to take legal action if the BBC did not make a “full and fair retraction” of the programme by Friday. The BBC has said it will reply in due course.
Outgoing BBC News CEO Deborah Turness, who has also resigned alongside Davie, insisted the corporation was not “institutionally biased”.
BBC chair Samir Shah said on Monday that the BBC would like to apologise for the edit, which he called an “error of judgement” which gave the impression of a “direct call for violent action”.
Davie’s staff call will take place mid-morning.
He said on Sunday the “current debate” around the corporation was not the only reason for his decision to step down, but “understandably contributed” to it.
“Overall the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made and as director general I have to take ultimate responsibility.”
The issue is expected to be raised in the Commons later in the day in a private session of the Culture, Media and Sport (CMS) committee.
Trump’s legal team wrote to the BBC on Sunday threatening to take action over the “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading, and inflammatory statements”.
It calls for an apology and for the BBC to “appropriately compensate” the president.
Trump’s attorney Alejandro Brito also accused the BBC of defamation under Florida law.
In his speech on 6 January 2021, 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.”
In the Panorama programme, he was shown saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
The two sections that were stitched together were originally more than 50 minutes apart.
The unprecedented joint resignations at the BBC came after growing pressure following the publication of the leaked internal memo last week by the Telegraph newspaper, which highlighted the Panorama edit which was first broadcast in October 2024.
Written by a former independent external adviser to the broadcaster’s editorial standards committee, Michael Prescott, the memo also expressed concerns about other issues.
It also raised concerns over the BBC’s Gaza coverage, particularly by BBC Arabic, anti-Trump and anti-Israel bias and one-sided transgender reporting – among other “troubling matters”.
The BBC chair, responding to the concerns for the first time on Monday, said it was “simply not true” the memo had uncovered issues the BBC had “sought to bury” – nor was it correct to suggest the BBC had done nothing to tackle concerns raised in the memo.
A spokesman for Sir Keir Starmer said on Monday the prime minister did not believe the BBC was “institutionally biased”.
No 10 also denied the BBC was “corrupt” – a word Trump used to describe some of its journalists over the Panorama programme.
Meanwhile, Sir Robbie Gibb, a former senior editor at the BBC who was director of communications for Theresa May in Downing Street, has faced calls to be removed from the BBC board.
Writing in the Guardian, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said “rightwing populists have been attacking the BBC for years”.
To ensure the BBC’s independence and impartiality, Sir Robbie should have no role in appointing the new director general, he wrote.
“The government should remove him from the board immediately – and end the practice of political appointments, which so badly undermines the BBC, altogether,” he said.
Sir Robbie has not responded.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the focus should be on the mistakes made “rather than chasing people because of their political opinions”.
Former Conservative MP Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg told the BBC’s Newsnight programme that the government should stay out of the latest controversy “because the BBC wants to maintain its independence from the government”.
Asked about the US president’s threat of legal action, he said: “I would have thought it would be sensible for the BBC to settle with Donald Trump… It won’t be a billion, it will be some lesser amount.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who claimed the BBC “has been institutionally biased for decades”, said he spoke with Trump on Friday, telling a London news conference: “He just said to me: ‘Is this how you treat your best ally?'”.
