London: BBC board member Shumeet Banerji has stepped down, criticising governance issues at the organisation in his resignation letter, BBC News reported.
The broadcaster confirmed his departure on Friday, noting that Banerji resigned only weeks before the end of his four year term. His exit comes amid heightened turmoil at the BBC, following the abrupt resignations of director general Tim Davie and BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness on 9 November.
Banerji said he had not been consulted on key developments surrounding those departures, adding to his dissatisfaction with governance practices.
Davie and Turness quit after mounting criticism of the BBC’s handling of political coverage, particularly Panorama’s documentary Trump: A Second Chance?, broadcast in October 2024. The programme edited footage from Donald Trump’s 6 January 2021 speech, stitching together two separate lines delivered nearly an hour apart. The sequence created the impression that Trump urged supporters to “fight like hell” while heading towards the US Capitol.
Trump and his allies argue the edit was misleading, stripping away context in which he also told the crowd to act “peacefully and patriotically” and to “cheer on our brave senators and Congressmen and women.”
The BBC apologised on 13 November for the editing but maintained there was “no legal basis” for Trump to sue for defamation.
The controversy has intensified scrutiny of the broadcaster, already facing accusations of internal bias following the leak of an internal memo.