BBC director general Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness resign over Trump documentary edit

[Changingplace]

So the BBC Director-General and the CEO of news have both resigned over an edit to Trump’s speech before the capitol riots.

What a mess, it’s not like you have to go far to find something to genuinely criticise Trump for and plays right into the White House labelling the BBC ‘fake news’ since this edit basically was.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cd9kqz1yyxkt?app-referrer=deep-link

The edited clip suggested that Trump told the crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.” But the words were taken from sections of his speech almost an hour apart. It did not include a section in which Trump said he wanted supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”.

It's messy, that's true, but I don't think it really merited their resignations. An apology maybe.

Trump did incite the violence at the Capitol and that was reported as such on all major news outlets at the time.

That's your view and you're welcome to it but the BBC are supposedly impartial and clearly have taken sides over the years. It's a really serious issue that has damaged them massively. I don't think the BBC will ever be the same again and rightly so.

There was a letter to the board from Michael Prescott who had been an external advisor to the editorial standards committee, criticising BBC news for not just this edit but for their bias on several other major news areas and, crucially their response when these issues were pointed out.

So while the edit, putting words into the mouth of a major world leader, is the most public of the issues, it is in the midst of allegations of bias from a credible source that are much more deep set.

The worrying thing with bias is in this instance we can all see what they did and how they stitched that speech together but if we don’t know they’ve purposely misreported something then we’re being manipulated. I just don’t trust the BBC anymore and try not to click on their news links.

I forget the name of the website but there’s a news site that will show you an article on a subject from left, right and centre outlets so you can get a balanced view. It’s quite enlightening.

It is our National Broadcaster.

If they can create fake content about something that is easily verifiable, what else are they doing?

@DwarfBeans Ground News?

Yeah they had to go, the report from Prescott was bad, they should be reporting the news with balance. I was actually quite aghast at it, it’s one thing to say the BBC leans a bit one way or the other, it’s completely different to manipulate news, which is what his letter said they regularly did. It’s not just the Trump thing, they had to issue something like 200 corrections on Gaza, thats astounding. The trans stuff is really quite obvious to anyone who’s taken in interest in womens rights over the last ten years (they completely ignored the WPATH files which was pretty extraordinary). You don’t even know if you are being lied to if you rely primarily on the BBC for news. Which for a state funded broadcaster is bloody shocking.

BBC used to be pretty solid, as was Panorama, feel really sad and annoyed by this.

For a long time, people have been complaining of left wing bias in the BBC and their so called VERIFY is an absolute joke.

They were sneered at and now, lo! It transpires that they were right.

I'm glad they've gone, named and shamed and I certainly hope that no-one has the brass neck to impose a raise in the licence fee next year.

Make the news a paid for service and then all those who want to swallow the cool aid can pay for it.

I'm listening to Today onR4 and they're still in denial about women's rights and anti semitism .
What else have they covered up and lied about
edit to add, the presenters atmosphere feels a bit febrile this morning.

The BBC have never been impartial I don’t know why people continue to trust them.

Tim Davie is a long time Tory, and was deputy chairman of a local Conservative Party association. He so isn’t guilty of “left wing bias” 😂😂😂

Yes but what do the drag queens think? Have they dedicated a few articles to the impact on them yet?

Trump has changed the world for the worse, in so many ways. But you cannot rearrange his words and report it as fact. That is teenage TikTok, not national news reporting.

Completely irrelevant!

The BBC has been found guilty of left wing bias and lying and he has gone because despite being warned, he ignored those warnings.

The organisation is riddled with it and yet some are so short sighted (polite way of putting it) they will still try to deny it!

I hope they make the news service a paid for service. I wouldn't buy the shitty Guardian newspaper and yet here I am , forced to pay for left wing wing biased news, if I want to watch or listen to BBC programmes.

No, let soft heads pay for their BBC news.

All these laughing emojis won’t help the BBC. They have a problem with systemic bias.

No, sorry it was totally merited. Turness had to go - whether pushed or she jumped doesn't matter - and Davie, to be honest had run out of road and had no friends where it mattered.

It’s not much a question of bias, it’s a matter of the ethos and journalism standards. There’s insufficient oversight and some very poor decisions being made in terms of doing investigative work either in the content or credibility and source .
Time after time, we hear news reports with no context or explanation, and you can bet that all that their reporters are doing is simply repeating what comes in from Reuters and the like.
Much of the programme making is outsourced, and the checks on content and accuracy and sources on those just don’t seem to happen. In the Gaza report narrated by the child, I gather that apparently questions had been raised but when they didn’t get an answer on various queries relating to the the source and identity of the child, they made the fatal decision to go and broadcast anyway. That’s the behaviour of an impetuous inexperienced person who doesn’t understand the ethos and responsibilities of the BBC, who didn’t take advice and who nobody questioned. Why was someone like that in the position to even make the decision when they clearly didn’t understand or appreciate the BBCs responsibility as a public service broadcaster?
As for the Trump editing issue, that must have gone through the hands of several people. Was everyone involved complicit, were they scared to whistleblow, or at least object at the time? There would have been at least 3 and probably more people in the room at the time, and more who knew about it, or who had oversight. They all knew it was completely contrary to everything the BBC is supposed to stand for . There needs to be a long hard look at the quality of the people they are employing, the training, oversight, and whistleblowing policies.

The BBC has not been “found guilty of left wing bias”. Typical Reform inaccuracy! The criticisms are more specific. And anyway, they were accused of right wing bias previous to that, during the pandemic.

In any case, the far right hate free press with a vengeance, and always have.

They had one job. They didn’t do it

They showed their workings and got caught.

It’s so engrained still people defend it.

If the DG has to resign every time a single news item is found to be at fault i think that job is impossible for anyone to do.

The BBC produces over 30,000 hours of programmes each year. To expect there to be zero mistakes made is ridiculous.

They may not be perfect but they put an awful lot more effort into attempting to be impartial than any other organisation.

Their 'Newswatch' programme illustrates how arrogant and blinkered the BBC news department is. Members of public comments about BBC news are dismissed in a patronising way.

They don't seem to be able to apologise and recognise when their reporting is somehow wrong. Instead they will justify themselves every time by explaining why they did it a certain way. They are not able to look inwards and admit they have messed up.

The 'Newswatch' programme is a tick-box exercise to make it seem like they can take criticism on board. Instead it emphasises how patronising and entrenched they are whist treating the general public like buffoons.

Even the Newswatch presenter seems frustrated with the BBC news departments replies to criticism.

Ah yes, that’s the one! Thank you.

You think stitching bits of a speech ten minutes apart into one sentence was a mistake? 🤔