While Tim Davie's resignation is welcome, its cause pales beside far graver failures

BBC director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness have finally resigned - but over an incident that pales beside far graver failures. The final straw was a poorly-edited Trump speech in a Panorama documentary. Splicing together footage - to suggest the US President had incited violence - violated basic editorial standards, but resigning over this feels almost insulting given what they chose not to resign over.

Frankly, anyone watching the BBC's coverage of Israel since the October 7 atrocities could see that something was going badly wrong at the state broadcaster. The corporation admitted broadcasting anti-Jewish hatred from Glastonbury into the nation's living rooms - then declared itself comfortable with that decision.

Journalist Samer Elzaenen, who reported from Gaza for BBC Arabic, called for Jews to be burned "as Hitler did". After his appalling comments were exposed, the BBC rehired him. Senior employee Dawn Queva called Jews "parasites" who invented a "holohoax". There are numerous similar examples. Little wonder that statistically impossible casualty figures from Hamas were reported as fact, whilst it took 400 days to correct an article falsely linking "fanatical Jews" to 9/11.

But deliberately mistranslating "Jews" as "Israelis" to sanitise antisemitism, and employing Hamas officials as "analysts", doesn't just breach journalistic standards - it incites hatred against a vulnerable minority. Former BBC director Danny Cohen called this institutional bias "out of control".

Yet when 200 Jewish staff requested an investigation into what they termed serious institutional racism, the BBC's leadership refused. Tim Davie declined antisemitism training from Lord John Mann, the government's antisemitism adviser, on three separate occasions. "Heads should roll," Mann said of these scandals.

But they didn't, and the distortions continued.

Then last week, the leaked report by external investigator Michael Prescott revealed a pattern of failures, from the activism of pro-trans journalists, skewing the BBC's coverage against so-called gender critical campaigners; to the 'fake news' Panorama piece that suggested, by splicing video clips together, that Donald Trump had incited the Capitol riots; to everyday Israel bashing - so often amplifying propaganda from Hamas, whose founding charter calls for slaughtering Jews and obliterating Israel in genocidal holy war.

Consider their false reporting on mass graves allegedly dug by Israeli soldiers - done by Palestinians with footage uploaded to social media months earlier. The Prescott report shows the BBC knew this, yet broadcast it regardless.

In an age of information chaos, who holds power accountable when BBC News betrays its core mission? Instead, audiences drift toward alternative sources - often finding worse.

The BBC needs urgent reform, not resignations over relatively minor infractions whilst systemic prejudice remains unaddressed.

• Alex Hearn is director of Labour Against Antisemitism