Deborah Turness

A former BBC chief executive who resigned over a misleading report about Donald Trump has said the scandal was down to a “problem with the edit”.

The US President is suing the BBC for £4.7 billion in damages for the alleged defamation.

A BBC Panorama documentary seemed the show Mr Trump urging rioters to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell”.

However, the programme had been edited to create a different story.

In fact, the President had urged supporters to “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”.

BBC Chief Executive Deborah Turness – along with Director General Tim Davie – resigned.

Ms Turness told the Semafor media conference in Washington:

“I decided to resign, that was my decision.

“I was running an organisation of 6,000 journalists that pushes out journalism in 42 languages around the world, and there was a problem with an edit in a Panorama documentary which was a year old.

“It wasn’t up to our editorial standards, but I don’t accept the charge that it was a sign of institutional bias.”

Mr Trump has said that the BBC “changed the words coming out of my mouth” and “admitted they cheated” after the BBC issued an apology.

Ms Turness said the broadcaster was not anti-Trump.