LONDON − An accusation about a "doctored" President Donald Trump speech. Allegations of systemically biased reporting and news decisions. Senior, longtime executives forced to quit and apologize.

Britain's storied BBC news organization was plunged into crisis on Nov. 9 after a leaked internal memo revealed that a documentary aired by its flagship current affairs program misled viewers. The BBC Panorama documentary edited together two parts of a Trump speech he made prior to the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.

The BBC's director general, Tim Davie, and Deborah Turness, chief executive of BBC News, resigned after The Daily Telegraph newspaper first published details of the leaked memo. The memo was written by a former journalist who was an independent external adviser to the broadcaster’s editorial standards committee.

How deep do the problems at the BBC go? Here's a brief explainer on the turmoil.

What are the BBC allegations related to the Jan. 6 Trump speech?

The leaked memo concluded that the BBC Panorama documentary "Trump: A Second Chance?," which was first broadcast in Britain in October last year, misleadingly juxtaposed comments by Trump in a way that made it appear as if he explicitly encouraged the attack on the Capitol.

In his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C., Trump said: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women."

In the Panorama edit, spliced together words in Trump's speech made about 50 minutes apart, Trump is shown saying: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol … and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell."

Trump's "fight like hell" remarks were made while he was talking about U.S. elections and corruption allegations.

There are wider BBC bias claims. What are they?

The BBC has regularly been accused of bias over the last decade or more. There has been criticism that it shies away from covering stories that raise difficult questions about race, transgender issues and immigration.

The BBC is funded by a taxpayer "license fee" supplemented by commercial revenue.

It has been accused of being too deferential to Britain's royal family and politically compromised by a majority metropolitan, left-leaning liberal outlook on topics such as Britain's withdrawal from the European Union, known as Brexit, as well as exhibiting varying strains of anti-Americanism, antisemitism and bias about the war in Gaza.

Britain’s media regulator Ofcom ruled earlier this year that the BBC had committed a "serious breach" of its broadcasting rules by failing to reveal that the narrator of one its documentaries about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official. The news organization was heavily criticized over the summer for failing to cut away from a live performance by a musician who led chants against Israel's military during the Glastonbury music festival.

Michael Prescott, who wrote the memo leaked to The Daily Telegraph, said that the new organization's BBC Arabic unit has repeatedly given a platform to a journalist there who had posted antisemitic comments.

"Journalists get things wrong, but when they always point in the same direction, that's a clear pattern of institutional bias," Chris Middleton, a former BBC journalist turned independent writer and commentator, said in a WhatsApp message. "The issue is that too many BBC journalists see themselves as activists for a cause rather than relayers of truth."

What's been the reaction, and what now for the BBC?

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accused the BBC of being "purposefully dishonest" over its characterization of Trump's speech ahead of the Capitol attack in Washington. And after the BBC's Davie and Turness resigned, Trump himself posted on his Truth Social platform about the matter.

"The TOP people in the BBC, including TIM DAVIE, the BOSS, are all quitting/FIRED, because they were caught "doctoring" my very good (PERFECT!) speech of January 6th," Trump wrote.

In his resignation statement, Davie said the BBC was "not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent and accountable." On Nov. 10, Turness went further in the news organization's defense, saying that "I'd like to make one thing very clear − BBC News is not institutionally biased."

Some of the BBC's most senior journalists have also come its defense in recent days.

"It’s clear that there is a genuine concern about editorial standards and mistakes," Nick Robinson, the presenter of the BBC's flagship morning radio show, "Today," wrote on social media on Nov. 8. "There is also a political campaign by people who want to destroy the organization … Both things are happening at the same time.”

But Matthew Goodwin, a right-leaning former academic who is a frequent critic of the news organization, wrote in his daily newsletter on Nov. 10 that the BBC has "thrown impartiality to the wind and imposed a narrow liberal progressive worldview on everybody else."

Goodwin drilled down on one specific example, noting that the BBC’s "push notifications" sent to users' devices showed what he described as a "glaring lack of balance" on the issue of immigration, which he said "also happens to be the most important issue in the country."

In September, 2023, Goodwin said that of the 219 push news alerts the BBC sent out that month "just four were about illegal migrants and asylum seekers − and three of those focused on the 'poor conditions' that allegedly face people who are breaking our laws."

In a post on LinkedIn, Dominic Ponsford, the editor of Britain's Press Gazette, which focuses on the journalism industry, said the BBC had "made a hash" of dealing with its impartiality allegations and the Panorama documentary about Trump. Ponsford also noted that at a time when truth and objective facts are under "concerted attack," including from Trump's White House, "strong BBC journalism is needed as never before."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A 'doctored' Trump speech. Allegations of systemic bias. Turmoil hits the BBC

Reporting by Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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