London ? The chief of the BBC stepped down Thursday as the badly rattled broadcaster struggled to respond to harsh criticism from a judge who repudiated its report that the government “sexed up” intelligence on Iraq.

The resignation of British Broadcasting Corp. director-general Greg Dyke stunned BBC employees, and hundreds of them rallied outside the network’s offices throughout Britain to show their support for him. One local BBC radio station briefly went off the air in protest.

The BBC apologized for errors it made in the story, which was at the center of a furious, monthslong battle with the government.

Dyke resigned after an emergency meeting of the board of governors. Board chairman Gavyn Davies quit Wednesday, hours after the judge, Lord Hutton, announced his findings.

The BBC, whose extensive news and entertainment programming gives it a uniquely powerful place in British life, was shaken by Hutton’s assessment Wednesday that its report was “unfounded” and its editorial procedures were “defective.”

The senior appeals judge led an inquiry into the July suicide of David Kelly, a government weapons adviser who was the source of BBC radio correspondent Andrew Gilligan’s report that the government exaggerated evidence on Iraqi weapons and included a claim it knew was probably false in a September 2002 dossier summing up intelligence for the public.

Hutton almost completely exonerated the government, saying it had neither mistreated Kelly nor knowingly “sexed up” the dossier and calling claims in Gilligan’s report “unfounded.”

The reporter broadcast that version without a script, answering an anchor’s questions extemporaneously. The BBC later faulted him for “loose use of language.”