BBC chairman Samir Shah ‘did not want to lose’ former director-general Tim Davie

BBC chairman Samir Shah has said he “did not want to lose” former director-general Tim Davie, who resigned on Sunday.

Mr Davie’s departure came after a report by Michael Prescott found that a speech by Donald Trump for BBC documentary series Panorama had been selectively edited, and came alongside the resignation of BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness.

Speaking on BBC News, Mr Shah, 73, said: “I did not want to lose Tim Davie, I think Tim Davie has been an outstanding director-general, and may I say, nor did any member of the board.

“We were upset by the decision, I do understand it at a very human level, Tim has gone through a lot of attacks, it’s been relentless.

“It’s also a very, very difficult job to join, the BBC is a huge, massive enterprise, and asks a lot of the director-general in terms of just his physical resilience and also emotional, and I do think it’s a characteristic, I would say, that we really do enjoy beating people up.

“And you’ve got to remember that these people are human, they have families, they have emotions, and you can’t consistently do that just because you want to give somebody a kicking, it’s not fair.

“It wasn’t fair on Tim, I’ve got to know Tim very well over the last 15 months, and I have huge admiration for what he’s done, and it’s an admiration shared by the board.”

Critics said the Panorama documentary, broadcast by the BBC the week before last year’s US election, was misleading and removed a section where Mr Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

The Prescott memo raised concerns about the way clips of Mr Trump’s speech on January 6 2021 were spliced together to make it appear he had told supporters he was going to walk to the US Capitol with them to “fight like hell”.

Asked if there is systemic bias at the BBC, Mr Shah said: “I know people don’t like the statistics, but the statistics say that the British people trust BBC News more than anything else.

“If there was this consistent institutional bias, do you think we’d have those figures?

“We wouldn’t, so I don’t think that’s right.

“That’s not to say that there aren’t real problems, real issues, both underlying and specific.”

Mr Davie, 58, had been director-general of the BBC since 2020, when he replaced Tony Hall, and also served as acting director-general from November 2012 to April 2013, following the resignation of George Entwistle.

Speaking before it was confirmed that US president Mr Trump had threatened legal action against the BBC, Mr Shah said the corporation had been contacted by Mr Trump, who he described as a “litigious fellow”, and said it was “considering how to reply to him”.