BBC Chairman’s humiliating apology as civil war erupts inside Corporation… as it emerges senior bosses discussed doctored footage way back in January

BBC chief Samir Shah finally issued an apology yesterday over doctored footage of Donald Trump after a blame game within the company became public.

Civil war has broken out between the BBC’s board and its news division following the resignations on Sunday of chief executive Tim Davie and BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness.

Both resigned – although it took Mr Davie up to nine months to replace him – over their handling of the impartiality row following a damning internal report into editorial failures.

So it was left to Mr. Shah to address the most egregious claim, that footage of the President was spliced ​​together and told his supporters to “march to the Capitol” and “fight like hell” during his speech on January 6, 2021.

The two segments, edited together, were actually hosted by Mr. Trump more than 50 minutes apart.

Mr Shah acknowledged the edit gave the impression of a ‘direct call for violent action’ from the US President and had sparked more than 500 complaints since the report by former editorial adviser Michael Prescott emerged last week.

The company’s chairman wrote: ‘The BBC would like to apologize for this error of judgement.’

But Mr Shah also said the BBC should have ‘acted sooner’ and acknowledged the Trump images were discussed at meetings of the BBC’s editorial watchdog in January and May, which he, Mr Davie and Ms Turness attended.

Mr Shah said BBC News bosses argued the aim of editing the clip was “to convey the message of President Trump’s speech, so that Panorama viewers can better understand how it was received by President Trump’s supporters and what was happening on the ground at the time”.

Director-general Tim Davie left the BBC on Sunday after five years in the corporation’s most senior role

Meanwhile, BBC presenters began peddling political coup plots at the company.

Nick Robinson used a monologue on Radio 4’s Today program to talk about ‘political interference’ and sources claiming ‘a hostile takeover of parts of the BBC’.

He said Mr Davie and Ms Turness had not explained ‘what they actually did wrong’ when they resigned and downplayed the impartiality debate, saying there were ‘no complaints about the editing of Donald Trump’s speech’ when it is broadcast in 2024.

Mr Robinson also appeared to want to brush off the myth, arguing that some listeners were tired of hearing ‘the BBC talking about itself’ and adding that there was ‘lots of other news’ in the world.

Instead, he said he placed the blame for the row on the BBC board because it refused to sign a statement Ms Turness made at last week’s debate, and named board member Sir Robbie Gibb, a former BBC political producer and Theresa May’s spin doctor, as leading the charge that there was an ‘institutional bias problem’ at the BBC.

Mr Robinson said: ‘BBC News executives, the journalists who run the News section, accepted the transcript of a statement earlier last week admitting it had been a mistake to edit together two different parts of Donald Trump’s speech.’

He added that ‘Despite this mistake, there was no intention to mislead the audience… This was not enough for the BBC board who refused to sign the declaration’.

Former Sun editor David Yelland, who now hosts the Radio 4 podcast, also told the Today program that Mr Davie’s resignation was ‘a coup’.

He added: ‘There were people within the BBC who were very close to the board and who systematically undermined Tim Davie and his senior team on the board, and this has been going on for a long time.’ Last night, a senior BBC figure denied such a statement had been turned down by the board.

They said: ‘There are clearly concerns about some editorial decisions and the wider context of news impartiality, but the board were 100 per cent behind Tim Davie. Claiming that there was a civil war, let alone a coup, is a completely false statement.

News chief executive Deborah Turness (filmed in October 2022) also resigned following criticism that the BBC documentary misled viewers

‘But there is a feeling across the board that the way to be pro-BBC is to make it better and make it truly neutral. If we want to maintain trust, we must make more of an effort and appear absolutely impartial.’

When she arrived at work yesterday, Ms Turness denied that her news team was ‘institutionally biased’ and defended herself as ‘the most trusted news provider’.

Mr Shah also fought back against allegations of systemic bias and criticized Mr Prescott for his ‘personal statement’ which offered only a ‘partial’ view of events.

In a letter to the culture, media and sport committee, he said Mr Prescott’s note ‘insinuated that he had ‘uncovered’ a list of stories and issues that the BBC had tried to ‘bury’. This comment is simply untrue.’

In an interview with the BBC’s media editor Katie Razzall, Mr Shah said it was ‘absolutely not true’ that the broadcaster was not responsible for errors and repeated that Mr Prescott had not brought the problems to light but knew about them because of his place on the BBC’s editorial watchdog.

Mr Shah also defended Mr Davie, who ran the BBC for five years. ‘I didn’t want to lose Tim Davie,’ he said, adding that there were people on the board who were ‘upset by the decision’.