The BBC is facing a coordinated, politically motivated attack. With these resignations, it’s given in | Jane Martinson

The corporation should have stood up to the Telegraph, Trump and the Tories. Now, its enemies know how little it takes for it to fold

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he resignation of the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, over accusations of bias comes as a shock and leaves a gulf at the top of the corporation when it needs leadership most. Davie stressed that the decision was his alone – neither the board, nor even many of those who led the coordinated attack among rightwing press and politicians expected it.

Now the resignations of both Davie and the CEO of BBC News, Deborah Turness, have shown that baying for blood gets results.

The biggest shock is that this saga began just a week ago with the leak of a 19-page “devastating memo” from Michael Prescott, a former political journalist who spent three years as an external adviser to the broadcaster, published in the Telegraph. The dossier alleges BBC Panorama doctored a speech by Trump, making him appear to support the January 6 rioters, that its Arabic coverage privileged pro-Hamas views, and that a group of LGBTQ employees had excessive influence on coverage of sex and gender. The Telegraph wrote that the BBC’s very silence “proves there is a serious problem”. Meanwhile, the former UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s “blast” at Nick Robinson, the only BBC staffer to publicly fight back against the accusations, leads the Mail on Sunday, and Donald Trump’s press secretary has called the BBC “100% fake news”