LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The head of the BBC and the chief executive of BBC News have resigned. It comes after criticisms that a BBC documentary edited a speech by President Trump and misled viewers. It's led to a crisis at Britain's national broadcaster and one of the world's biggest news organizations, which reaches nearly half a billion people around the world every week. And we should note that NPR has an office at BBC's headquarters in London. NPR's Fatima Al-Kassab has been following the story and joins us from London. Good morning.
FATIMA AL-KASSAB, BYLINE: Morning, Leila.
FADEL: Fatima, how much of a crisis is this for the BBC? And how did this come about?
AL-KASSAB: Leila, this is really seismic. It's pretty unprecedented to have two top bosses at the BBC resign in one night. This really came as a surprise. But it comes after days of mounting pressure and damaging headlines about the BBC. This all started with a newspaper report in The Telegraph, which suggested that a BBC documentary that aired a week before last year's presidential election had edited two parts of a speech by President Trump so that he appears to explicitly encourage the Capitol Hill riots. The clips spliced together two separate parts of President Trump's January 6 speech which were originally more than 50 minutes apart.
Now, the BBC says no complaints were received about the editing of the speech at the time, but these claims published last week ignited this latest crisis. They come from a memo published by The Telegraph newspaper from a former external adviser to the BBC, who also accused the corporation of serious and systemic bias in its coverage of a whole range of issues, so not just President Trump but also Gaza and trans rights. And the BBC chair has formally apologized this morning for what he called an error of judgment in how the documentary edited President Trump's speech.
FADEL: Now, the BBC is the U.K.'s national public broadcaster. And it's not new to scrutiny. So what's changed?
AL-KASSAB: That's right. I mean, just this summer, for example, the BBC was criticized for not cutting away from its livestream of Glastonbury Music Festival. That's when one act, the punk duo Bob Vylan, began leading chants against the Israeli military. Now, that's just one of the controversies. And it illustrates that whatever the issue is, whether it's Israel-Gaza or other issues, there are people on both sides of the political spectrum who aren't happy with the BBC.
Now, the BBC has always come under pressure from all sides. But recently, some of that criticism has just gotten louder, especially right-wing criticism. In his resignation statement, the BBC's director-general Tim Davie acknowledged that mistakes had been made. But he said that in what he called polarizing times, the BBC should be championed and not weaponized.
FADEL: What has the reaction been to these resignations?
AL-KASSAB: So President Trump welcomed the news overnight. He wrote on Truth Social. He said, thank you to The Telegraph for exposing these corrupt journalists. He also said BBC journalists tried to step on the scales of a presidential election. Now, political reaction here in the U.K. has been varied. You've got politicians on the right who'd been calling for heads to roll over this. They welcomed the news. But others are really concerned about press freedom. This is what member of Parliament Ed Davey had to say. He's the leader of Britain's third biggest party, the Liberal Democrats. And he said that people on the right in British politics were following in the footsteps of Trump's America and endangering free press.
ED DAVEY: We are deeply worried that we're seeing populism, right-wing populism, damaging our institutions like the BBC.
AL-KASSAB: Some senior staff at the BBC say they feel this as part of a political attack against the organization. It's a major crisis. But for now, the organization has its two top jobs to fill. And then there's the question of rebuilding trust in the BBC, which will take longer.
FADEL: That's NPR's Fatima Al-Kassab in London. Thank you, Fatima.
AL-KASSAB: Thanks, Leila.
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