Donald Trump’s White House has said “everybody should watch GB News” after the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, resigned following a leaked memo that found the corporation “inappropriately” spliced together parts of his January 6, 2021 address.
A leaked 19-page memo on impartiality by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee, ruled the broadcaster gave the impression that he told supporters he would march with them to the US Capitol to “fight like hell.” The sequence appeared in the BBC documentary Trump: A Second Chance?, which aired the week before last year’s US election.
It led to Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, the CEO of BBC News, to resign on Sunday night ahead of an apology next week.
But, in response, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “BBC News is dying because they are anti-Trump Fake News.
“Everyone should watch GB News!”
Donald Trump gave support to the rightwing channel last month, with the launch of its nightly stateside programme, The Late Show Live.
Last month, at the launch party, Leavitt told the event that GB News shared “the values this administration holds dear: Free speech, that men cannot be women, secure borders – we don’t want illegal aliens invading our countries.”
Alan McCormick, the GB News chairman, went further according to the Guardian. “Britain has been infected by a mind virus that sees no value in place, in family, in community, in love of country and these views have [been] reinforced by an establishment media who have suppressed any alternative viewpoints,” he said. “GB News was launched to end this neglect.”
Following Davie’s resignation on Sunday night, GB News presenter Tom Hardwood posted on X: “Personally, I think it’s insane that we expect the director general of the BBC to be across the particulars of every edit of every single programme. The panorama programme was a disgrace. But what does the resignation of the DG [director general] do to help the matter?”