Why is the BBC facing its most serious crisis in decades? World news

Defamed by political enemies, who accuse it of chronic bias – in this case, to the left – and targeted by rival media companies, who resent its public funding, the BBC has become a permanent football in Britain’s political contests. Thanks to its global reach, it regularly comes into conflict with foreign governments as well, from India to the United States.

The BBC’s director-general, Tim Davie, and the chief executive of BBC News, Deborah Torres, attributed their resignations in part to the storm that followed a misleadingly edited documentary about Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021, attacks on the Capitol. But their exit followed a series of controversies over the BBC’s coverage of other sensitive issues, ranging from the war in the Gaza Strip to transgender rights.

“This is a critical time for the BBC to be neutral because there is not a lot of neutrality in the world,” said Howard Stringer, the former head of CBS News who sat on the BBC’s board. “They clearly felt that confronting Trump was important, but in this case, he gave Trump a chance and left Tim Davey exposed.”

“The BBC has more enemies than I had at CBS News,” Stringer continued, “because the government interferes, and British newspapers are more competitive with the BBC than newspapers in the United States.”

None of this is to say that the BBC has not made its problems worse. Its Chairman, Samir Shah, apologized in a letter to a parliamentary committee on Monday for what he described as an “error in judgment” in editing a documentary about Trump on the Panorama program.

The film, titled “Trump: A Second Chance?”, which aired before last year’s presidential election, collects footage of comments Trump made about 50 minutes apart in a speech on January 6, shortly before riots broke out at the Capitol. Shah admitted that the editing “gave the impression of a direct invitation to violence.”

The BBC’s delayed apology has baffled current and former staff. Analysts said that if the broadcaster had acknowledged the mistake quickly, it might have been able to contain the crisis.

The criticism was one of several about BBC coverage raised in a wide-ranging and highly critical leaked memo written by Michael Prescott, a journalist turned communications consultant who was an independent external adviser to the broadcaster’s Editorial Standards Committee.

This prompted White House press secretary Carolyn Levitt to describe the BBC as “100% fake news” in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, which first reported Prescott’s memo last week.

BBC media editor Katie Razzall reported on Sunday that the statement for the Panorama documentary had been “ready for publication” for days, but the BBC board had, for unknown reasons, prevented Torness from “putting this apology forward”, leaving Torness angry and frustrated.

“Nature abhors a vacuum, and Donald Trump has filled that vacuum,” said John Sobel, who covered Trump’s first term as BBC North America editor.

Sobel, now host of “The News Agents,” said he always feared the cost of getting something wrong about Trump, given the rise of the BBC and the president’s habit of attacking unfavorable coverage. “Don’t leave any room for error, you just have to be precise,” he said. “To find yourself on one side, and Trump is angry with you, means you have lost.”

In his resignation statement on Sunday, Davey did not mention the documentary, offering only a general admission that “some mistakes were made” and that as general manager, “I have to take ultimate responsibility.” But that didn’t stop Trump from calling him and Turness “corrupt journalists” on social media. The BBC confirmed on Monday that it had received a letter from the president threatening legal action.

Sobel, who knows Davey well, said his decision to leave was not entirely surprising, even if the timing surprised his colleagues. Since he was appointed director-general in 2020, Davie, a longtime BBC executive whose roots are in marketing, not journalism, has had to navigate one crisis after another.

In 2021, he apologized for a sensational interview with Princess Diana, conducted 25 years ago by the BBC’s Martin Bashir, after an outside investigator found that Bashir had duped Diana’s brother, Charles, Earl Spencer, into obtaining the interview.

In 2023, Davie was criticized for failing to act more quickly in the case of Hugh Edwards, a BBC presenter accused of sexual misconduct. Edwards later pleaded guilty to three counts of obtaining indecent images of children.

In the same year, Davie faced a mutiny after Gary Lineker, the popular football broadcaster, was suspended from his weekly programme. On social media, Lineker likened the Conservative government’s policy towards asylum seekers to German policy in the 1930s. Davy reinstated Lineker before terminating his contract in 2025 following a subsequent inflammatory post about Israel.

In 2024, Davie was back under the microscope for what critics said was a failure to deal with accusations of unwelcome physical behavior and inappropriate language towards colleagues by MasterChef presenter Greg Wallace. Wallace was then sacked, with Davie remarking, “There’s no one who can’t be replaced.”

The war between Israel and Hamas has brought a new set of headaches. A 2025 documentary titled “Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone” came under fire after it emerged that the 13-year-old narrator’s father was a Hamas official. Davie pulled the film from the BBC’s online stream after saying he had lost confidence in it.

Last summer, he was again on the defensive when Bob Phelan, the English rap duo, was cut short by the BBC after they led the audience at the Glastonbury festival in chanting “Death to the IDF,” a reference to the Israeli military.

Claire Enders, a London-based media analyst who is a friend of Davies, said he once told her that his job at the BBC was like opening a Pandora’s box full of unpleasant surprises every day.

“Every director-general has faced these issues, but they have faced more of them because during their tenure, the world has become more divided,” she said.

Before Trump entered the fray, the BBC was regularly targeted by a phalanx of right-wing dissidents. Boris Johnson, the former Conservative prime minister, called for a rally shortly after Prescott’s memo was leaked.

“We have the BBC using a flagship program to tell obvious lies about Britain’s closest ally,” he wrote on social media.

Nigel Farage, the right-wing populist who leads Britain’s anti-immigrant Reform Party, accused the BBC of “election interference.” He said he discussed the matter with Trump last Friday, and that the president expressed his feelings “not in a quotable manner.”

Despite the constant clamor of criticism, Enders noted that the BBC remained more trusted by viewers than the major US networks, according to a recent study by market research firm Pew Research. During Davy’s tenure, entertainment programs also flourished.

The British government has offered qualified support to the BBC, although Trump’s role in the drama has put Prime Minister Keir Starmer in an awkward position. He has strived to avoid conflict with Trump over issues such as tariffs and the war in Ukraine. On Monday, senior officials portrayed the protest as a “teachable moment” for the radio. Even the BBC’s staunchest defenders agreed.

“They made a mistake, and when they found out, they didn’t acknowledge it,” Enders said. “What is best for the BBC is to reset and address these issues. Showing the BBC’s political bias is the most dangerous thing you can do in this world.”