Gavin Grey: UK correspondent on BBC's director general and News CEO both resigning

BBC director general Tim Davie and CEO of News Deborah Turness have resigned over the way a documentary on Donald Trump was edited.

It comes after the Telegraph published details of a leaked internal BBC memo, suggesting Panorama edited two parts of Trump's speech together so he appeared to explicitly encourage the Capitol riots of January 2021.

UK correspondent Gavin Grey says it's been a 'difficult day' for the company, but Trump celebrated this outcome on Truth Social.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Devin Gray UK correspondence with US Sealo Gevin Hi the Heller.
So Trump will be.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Happy, Yeah, he is very very happy. This over the
resignations of two senior people within the BBC, first of
all the big boss, the Director General, Tim Davi, and
also the head of News, Debra Urness, resigning as well.
All this over the editing of a documentary in which
there was one particular point at which they played a

(00:28):
clip from Donald Trump's speech on the sixth of January
twenty twenty one when it was appearing on the program
as though he told supporters he was going to walk
to the US Capitol with them to fight like hell.
But what had happened was they edited together two sound
bites from his speech and the sound bites were more

(00:49):
than fifty minutes apart. And this is really for any journalist,
an absolutely criminal, you know, absolutely sid a prime don't
do this that you learn on day one about context
of editing things together and how it got passed and
through the BBC. While that probably investigation is still underway.

(01:09):
But the BBC chair Sam Ischhan called it a very
very difficult day and thanked particularly the head of the
News organization for transforming the corporation's output for news, but
welcome by Donald Trump, who's always called it fake news
and has been criticized in the BBC for, as he said,

(01:30):
quote very dishonest people who tried to step on the
scales of a presidential election. He posted that on truth Social. Meanwhile,
his Press secretary Caroline Levitt posted a trumphort two word
reaction on X using the drinking term shot to describe
reports that the US president was going to war with
fake news and describing the resignation of the boss as

(01:52):
a chaser, a drink taken after the shot to soften
the taste of alcohol, and then added BBC is dying
because they are anti Trump fake news.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Welly, how much weight do these north sea oil workers
have to lose in order to stay in the jobs?

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well, some of them quite a bit, and thousands actually
it is face losing their jobs because they've been told
that they have to weigh no more than one hundred
and twenty four point seven kilograms when clothed. And that
is because quite simply, there are new regulations that come
in from next February, so a year's time from the

(02:32):
offshore Energy's UK the industry body that says the maximum
clothed weight for a worker heading offshore should be one
hundred and twenty four point seven kilograms, that's nineteen and
a half stone, so they can be winched to safety
in an emergency. Now, the Coastguard rescue helicopter winchload is
made up of a figure plus the average weight of

(02:52):
a rescue worker and the stretcher and the kit. So
when you add all those together, you don't know more
than two hundred and forty nine kilograms and that they're
saying therefore is the maximum. The industry body said more
than two two hundred workers are currently above the weight
limit and jobs could therefore be lost if they don't

(03:14):
lose the weight. Now, the industry body says the average
weight of offshore workers has risen by almost ten kilograms
since two thousand and eight, and the decision to implement
a safe weight limit for those offshore workers on the
rigs across the North Sea that's to the north and
east of Scotland follows a review by industry experts over

(03:34):
the past two and a half decades. But yes, two
two hundred people told effectively dart or lose your job
to be fair.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
One hundred and twenty kjesus pretty generous to them. I
would have thought now on the homelessness, it's a bigger
problem that you guys actually realize.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Right, Yes, that's right. New figures out from the charity
Crisis claim that it's a much bigger figure than is
currently being put about by the government. The charitisas the
number of people facing the worst forms of homeless and
has grown by a fifth in three years. They now
say that figure stands at three hundred thousand, and that

(04:07):
is basically they're saying the real figures is based on
people declaring themselves as homeless, which Crisis says does not
you know, always happen people are homeless, don't declare themselves
as homeless, and that's why they believe the figure is
much worse than it is and is getting much much
worse quite fast. They say it is quite unsuitable for

(04:30):
people to be put up in bed and breakfasts and
properties far away from family and friends. And they say
an additional eighteen thousand, six hundred families are living in
what they call unconventional accommodations, such as in their cars
or in sheds or intents. So they are saying yeah,
these figures are big underestimate. The government's saying, look, we've

(04:51):
invested some two billion New Zealand dollars in homelessness in
the last few years and a big figure just a
year on you in the last year too, and they
say they're doing their best. But yeah, the charity makes
that look like not enough and not soon enough.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Hi Gavin, thank you. We'll talk to you in a
couple of days. Gavin Gray are UK correspondent.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
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