Outgoing BBC director general Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness have found an unlikely ally in the shape of former Sun editor David Yelland.
The former editor of the right-leaning tabloid told BBC Radio 4’s Today show this monrning that the surprise double resignation, in large part due to BBC Panorama’s editing of a speech by populist US president Donald Trump, was the result of “a coup” orchestrated from inside the BBC, and followed the systematic undermining of the pair by people close to the BBC board over a lengthy period.
“It was a coup, and worse than that, it was an inside job. There were people inside the BBC, very close to the board…on the board, who have systematically undermined Tim Davie and his senior team over a period of [time] and this has been going on for a long time. What happened yesterday didn’t just happen in isolation,” Yelland, who also co-presents the BBC podcast When It Hits the Fan, said.
“What has happened here is there was a failure of governance. I don’t blame the chairman [Samir Shah] as an individual, but the job of the chair of any organisation, a company – including the BBC – is to keep their CEO, their top man or woman, in post or fire them. And that has not happened, because Tim Davie was not fired. He walked and so there was, that is the definition of, a failure of governance.”
READ MORE: You’re fired – Tim Davie out in double top-level BBC resignation over Trump editing
Shah is expected to apologise today to the Commons’ Culture, Media and Sport committee, and to provide further details on the Panorama episode.
Sunday’s resignation of Davie, an appointee during the reign of notable left-wing firebrand PM Boris Johnson, and Turness followed days of attacks from the White House and right-wing commentators in the UK that were prompted by claims published by the Daily Telegraph.
The paper reported a leaked record of the findings of a former independent external adviser to its editorial guidelines and standards committee, Michael Prescott, who left his role in the summer.
He had criticised the editing of a speech by Donald Trump in an edition of Panorama, which he claimed made it appear that Trump had encouraged the US Capitol attack. Two sections of the speech that were spliced together were made an hour apart, and the edit did not note that Trump had also said he wanted his supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
