A member of the BBC’s Board of Directors, which oversees the network’s strategy and public mission, presented his resignation today in protest over what he called “governance” issues of the entity, plunged into a crisis due to the multimillion-dollar lawsuit that US President Donald Trump has threatened, British public television reported today.
Counselor Shumeet Banerji also said that his resignation was due to “not having been consulted” about the events that led to the recent resignation of his general director, Tim Davie, and his head of news, Deborah Turness, after it was revealed that a program broadcast last year contained a manipulation of a Trump speech in which the latter appeared to be directly calling for a violent assault on the Capitol, like the one that finally happened in 2021.
The BBC’s Board of Directors is made up of twelve people, who have no responsibility for the news content but ensure that it adapts to the station’s mission as a public service.
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Donald Trump demanded that the BBC issue a public apology and compensate him for that program, and although the network issued an apology last week in a letter to the White House that it made public, and that removed the controversial program from its schedules, it refused to financially compensate the president.
As a result, Trump said he planned to sue the BBC for between $1 billion and $5 billion, something he would specify this week, although he has not done so yet.
Next Monday, the president of the Board of Directors Samir Shah – who has denied intentionality in that program and has repeatedly defended the work of the network’s journalists – will appear to give explanations before the parliamentary committee on culture, media and sports, along with two other advisors, Robbie Gib and Caroline Thomson.
With information from EFE.
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