The resignation as BBC director general Mr Greg Dyke's has split the staff from the governors, the National Union of Journalists warned today.
NUJ general secretary Mr Jeremy Dear said there was "real anger" towards the board for allowing the popular BBC chief to quit in the wake of the Hutton Report.
Speaking after meeting union members in Cardiff last night, Mr Dear told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "They felt they should be supporting Greg Dyke in maintaining the BBC's independence from government."
Mr Dear's comments came after BBC staff clubbed together to place an advert in a British national newspaper today expressing their "dismay" at the director-general's departure.
Organisers collected thousands of signatures and raised enough money from staff to pay for the full-page advertisement in The Daily Telegraph, entitled The Independence of the BBC.
Tory vice-chairman Boris Johnson, a friend of reporter Andrew Gilligan, who quit the BBC last night, said the reporter left because he felt he was not going to be given his job back on the Today programme.
He said it was "jolly difficult" for him to stay on if he was not going to be reinstated to the programme. Mr Johnson said Mr Gilligan's main charges were right.