Israeli officials and Jewish community leaders in the United Kingdom welcomed the resignation on Sunday of BBC director general Tim Davie and CEO of news Deborah Turness, amid a scandal over the network’s coverage of President Donald Trump.
The scandal concerns a documentary by Panorama, the network’s flagship program, that featured a doctored speech of Trump’s from January 2021.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews said in a statement that the resignations “must be seen as the beginning, rather than the end, of a process of renewal.” To restore trust in the BBC, a “deep cultural change will be necessary,” the Board added.
An internal memo raised the alarm about the Trump speech video, saying it was misleading. However, the memo appears to have been ignored.
Aired ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential elections, the show suggested Trump had told followers to “fight like hell” ahead of Jan. 6, 2021 riots. Yet that phrase came from of a different part of the speech, about elections corruption more broadly.
In two separate statements on Sunday, Davie acknowledged “there have been some mistakes,” with Turness saying, “the buck stops with me.”
Davie did not mention Israel in his resignation letter and alluded to the Trump controversy only generally. “While not being the only reason, the current debate around BBC News has understandably contributed to my decision,” he wrote, adding that despite “mistakes,” the BBC was “delivering well.”
Turness wrote that, “While mistakes have been made, I want to be absolutely clear recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong.”
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs disputed this. The resignations, the ministry wrote, underscored “the deep-seated bias that has long characterised the BBC’s coverage of Israel. For far too long, the BBC has spread disinformation that fuels antisemitism and radicalisation.”
The BBC has faced bias allegations for decades on Israel, and especially during the war in Gaza, which broke out after Hamas terrorists invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, wrote on X that, “When it comes to Israel, journalistic standards often vanish. Time for greater accountability in global media.”
Last week, The Telegraph reported on an internal memo at the BBC regarding its Arabic-language division. Allegations made against Israel were “raced to air” without adequate checks, the memo says, suggesting either carelessness or “a desire always to believe the worst about Israel.”
The BBC has spent close to $500,000 to avoid the publication of the 2003 Balen Report—an internal review of its Israel coverage.
In February, BBC aired and then took offline an hour-long documentary film whose protagonist was a boy named Abdullah. It later emerged that the boy’s father, Ayman Alyazouri, was a deputy minister of agriculture in the Hamas-run government. The child’s family ties were not revealed to viewers.
The U.K.’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) last month said that the BBC would need to apologize for this oversight.
BBC Arabic has seen a series of scandals involving not only controversial coverage of Israel but antisemitic and hateful anti-Israel rhetoric by its writers. A recent scandal involved the platforming of a Palestinian pundit who the broadcaster knew had celebrated Adolf Hitler and the killing of Jews.
Another freelance contributor, Ahmed Qannan, who has also appeared on BBC Arabic, praised Palestinian terrorists and expressed hope that wounded Israeli civilians would die. Ahmed Alagha, who has reported for the British public broadcaster since early 2023, described the Israeli army as “the embodiment of filth” and referred to Jews as “the devils of the hypocrites,” according to a Telegraph report from April.
