Trump-BBC live updates: US president tells corporation to apologise or he will sue them for $1bn

Sir Robbie Gibb’s position on the BBC board is being called into question amid bias accusations at the broadcaster.

Sir Robbie served as director of communications for Theresa May when she was in Downing Street as Conservative prime minister before his appointment to the broadcaster’s board.

Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney said his position fuelled doubt and debate about BBC independence and impartiality.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said Sir Robbie should be removed from the board immediately.

SNP leader Mr Swinney told LBC: “Robbie Gibb is a very clearly affiliated party political figure on the board of the BBC.

“If the BBC wants to be viewed as an impartial organisation that’s authoritative, that reflects the independence of commentary, then I think Robbie Gibb’s position is untenable.”

In The Guardian, Sir Ed wrote that Sir Robbie should not have a say in choosing the BBC’s next director-general.

Supporters of the BBC, including journalists at The Guardian and The Financial Times, and some BBC staff, believe there was an orchestrated right-wing campaign to undermine the corporation, according to statements they’ve made.

“This is a crisis created by political and commercial opponents to public service broadcasting and the BBC,” said Diane Coyle, an economist and vice-chair of a former BBC governing body.

The supporters say daily leaks of criticism from the memo ramped up pressure, while high-profile figures such as former Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson fuelled the controversy.

Alan Rusbridger, former editor of The Guardian who now heads Prospect magazine, said many on the BBC board came from a background of finance or business, or had not worked in journalism for a long time. He said as well as a new director-general, the corporation needed stronger governance.

“The board itself is not really well placed to make fine editorial judgements,” he said.

“Any director-general coming in would want to know who’s got their back and whether there are people who can make the judgements and defend the journalism when it needs to be defended, or reach sophisticated judgements on when it needs to be corrected or apologised for.”

The BBC’s media correspondent, Katie Razzall, and political presenter Nick Robinson both said they had been told there was a clash with the board, with news executives wanting to publish an apology and the board preventing it.

The controversy arose because the corporation was “not willing” to listen to “the recommendations of their own internal system for checking bias”, a former presenter claims.

Mark Urban, former diplomatic editor of Newsnight, told Sky News: “This crisis has come about because the BBC, including Deborah Turness, were not willing to listen to and act sufficiently energetically upon the recommendations of their own internal system for checking bias.”

He highlighted reporting of gender issues, race and Gaza.

“And I think when you put all those things collectively together, we understand, and if you’ve been in meetings, as I have for many years, you’ve seen the BBC change in recent years, I think, in common with many other news organisations and many other publicly funded organisations, but you’ve seen that much more – for want of a better word – woke tendency among younger members of staff, and the tension between young and old.

“And of course that’s what’s burst out here.”

Tim Davie quit after an explosive memo accusing the BBC of bias was leaked last week.

The report, by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee, claimed:

• The Panorama documentary Trump: A Second Chance? “seemed to be taking a distinctly anti-Trump stance” and had “materially misled viewers”.

• The memo said several members of staff had shared concerns about the BBC’s coverage of transgender issues. He said there had been stories “celebrating the trans experience without adequate balance or objectivity”.

• Prescott said there had been a “selection bias” in favour of certain stories being sent as push notifications to the BBC app. The memo says there was a bias against sending stories about migration and asylum-seekers.

• He also said there had been “ill-researched” stories about racism, including a BBC Verify story about a correlation between higher car insurance premiums in ethnically diverse areas. The story has now been removed.

• Prescott highlighted concerns of biased reporting on the BBC’s Arabic service and in other coverage of Gaza.

US president Donald Trump has threatened legal action against the BBC over the way a speech he made was edited in a Panorama documentary, his lawyers saying the corporation must retract its documentary by Friday or face a lawsuit for “no less” than $1bn.

Chairman Samir Shah has apologised for the “error of judgment”, which triggered the resignations of director-General Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness on Sunday over accusations of biased editing of a speech by Mr Trump on 6 January 2021, before a crowd of supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington.

The hour-long documentary — titled Trump: A Second Chance? — was broadcast days before the 2024 US presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Mr Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell”.

Among the parts cut out was a section where Mr Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

Mr Shah said the broadcaster accepted “that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action.”

A letter from Trump lawyer Alejandro Brito demanded the BBC “retract the false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements”, apologise and “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused” or face legal action for $1bn in damages.

Tim Davie’s salary was between £540,000 and £544,999, according to the BBC.

He worked for the corporation for 20 years and was director-general for five.

These are the controversies he faced: