The BBC’s Director General, Tim Davie, should resign following a damning whistle blower report detailing bias in the corporation’s news output, according to former BBC director of television Danny Cohen.
Speaking to GB News, Mr Cohen described the report as “devastating” and said it could not be easily dismissed.
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“What’s so significant is that it’s an insider’s account,” he explained.
“It’s not external criticism. It’s the report of someone who has been inside the BBC for three years, part of the team investigating editorial and journalistic problems and failures.”
Danny Cohen said it is time for Tim Davie to resign
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GB NEWS
“It’s clear the whistleblower reached such a point of despair at what he was seeing and the failure of management to address it, that he wrote this report, which ended up in the hands of Government.”
When asked if Tim Davie should resign, Mr Cohen was unequivocal, saying: “Yes, he should. And of course, in another age, the head of BBC News would have already had to resign in embarrassment.
“We’ve seen it before at the BBC. I think there’s a failure of governance going on at the BBC at the moment.
“When things are as serious as this, they just put up walls and say they’re not taking it seriously, even when the evidence is so clear.
“On BBC Arabic, which I’ve written about numerous times, there’s been reporting that could be described as pro-Hamas propaganda.
“They’ve used journalists who celebrated the October 7 attacks. Mr Prescott reveals that one of those individuals appeared 500 times on BBC Arabic.
BBC boss Tim Davie has faced calls to quit over the scandal
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GETTY“He also shows a systemic bias in the way stories about Hamas were reported.
“When this was raised with senior news executives at the BBC, one of the responses was, ‘Well, we’re nearly as popular as Al Jazeera,’ as if that justified it.”
He continued: “The failure to reform this is an absolute disgrace. As a Jewish person, knowing that the BBC is funding a service which has broadcast Hamas propaganda and given a platform hundreds of times to people who have said things like Palestinians should do to Jews what Hitler did and that those people appeared on the service with no real changes is deeply, deeply dismaying.”
Shadow Culture Secretary Nigel Huddleston has submitted an urgent question regarding alleged BBC bias, GB News understands.
She told The People’s Channel: “Everyone with a TV pays a licence, they are funded by us and they should not be telling us things that are not true. Heads should roll.
“Whoever did that should be sacked. That’s what Tim Davie should be doing: identifying who put out misinformation and dismissing them.
“The public must be able to trust our public broadcaster.”