Seven Days of Paralysis: Inside the BBC Crisis Over a Trump Documentary

With board members and executives deadlocked over how to respond, the news organization kept silent for days, allowing a controversy to snowball.

The response was ready to go.

After furious headlines in a British newspaper accused the BBC of institutional bias over a misleading edit of a speech by President Trump, top executives at the British public broadcaster knew they had to act quickly.

On Tuesday, Nov. 4, a day after the first article had appeared online, they were prepared to go public with a statement approved by the BBC’s top communications team and the director general, Tim Davie. It would acknowledge that Panorama, the flagship investigative program, had made a mistake by splicing together footage from Mr. Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, 2021, shortly before an attack on the Capitol.

To their frustration, the executives, including the head of news, Deborah Turness, found themselves blocked by the BBC board, according to four BBC executives and another senior employee with knowledge of the events. News executives and board members were divided over whether to focus on the editing error, or to concede wider failings in the newsroom.