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  • BBC to bring back Gary Lineker; social media guidelines to be reviewed

    BBC to bring back Gary Lineker; social media guidelines to be reviewed

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    After BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation)’s sports coverage was disrupted for the second consecutive day on Sunday, its director-general Tim Davie said that its star sports presenter Gary Lineker will be back on air with his Match of the Day program this weekend.

    In a statement released on Monday, Davie announced an independent committee will be formed to review the channel’s existing social media guidance with full transparency.

    “Impartiality is important to BBC. It is also important to the public. The BBC has a commitment to impartiality in its Character and a commitment to freedom of expression. That is a difficult balancing act. The BBC’s social media guidance is designed to help manage these sometimes difficult challenges and I am aware there is a need to ensure that the guidance is up to its task. It should be clear, proportionate and appropriate,” the statement read.

    Davie also stated that Lineker is a valued part of the BBC and he is looking forward to working with him this weekend.

    Responding to the statement, Gary Lineker appreciated BBC’s decision and looked forward to getting back on air.

    What happened

    Gary Lineker is a former English football captain. After retirement, he joined the BBC as a sports broadcaster and ran the show Match of the Day which covered international football matches.

    Gary is known for his strong political views that often land him in trouble with the government. On March 7 Lineker criticized the UK’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s immigration policy about stopping immigrants, on social media.

    In his tweet, the 62-year-old described the policy as ‘awful’ and compared it to the Nazi regime. “Good heavens, this is beyond awful” to a video posted on Twitter by the British Home Office announcing the government’s asylum seeker policy. There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?”

    His tweet led to many coming heavily on him who said it was inappropriate and unacceptable. In order to control the storm, BBC suspended Match of the Day triggering massive walkouts by staff in solidarity.

    There is mounting pressure on the top team to resolve the crisis after the BBC, which operates through a taxpayer-funded license fee, said it considered Lineker posting such views on social media as a breach of its impartiality guidelines.

    UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt told Sky News that he “profoundly” disagrees with Lineker’s comments, but stopped short of demanding an apology.

    “The central thing that people want to know is that there isn’t any kind of political agenda in the way the BBC goes about its business, which I’m not saying there is, but that is the confidence people need to have,” he said.



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    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • BBC sports coverage disrupted for second day over Gary Lineker Twitter row

    BBC sports coverage disrupted for second day over Gary Lineker Twitter row

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    London: The BBC’s sports coverage faced a second day of disruption on Sunday as several members of its staff refused to work in solidarity with star football host Gary Lineker, who was taken off air over a tweet criticising the British government’s migration policy.

    In a post on Tuesday on his Twitter account that has 8.7 million followers, 62-year-old Lineker a former England football captain and now one of the UK’s most influential media figures compared Rishi Sunak government’s language about migrants to that used in Nazi Germany.

    He has not tweeted or commented since the row erupted but the broadcaster’s decision to block him from its flagship “Match of the Day” football show triggered mass walkouts by staff in solidarity.

    Regular sport programmes that were due to be on-air have been replaced with previously aired episodes and some fixtures are to be telecast without the regular supporting expert commentary.

    Tim Davie, the BBC’s director-general, apologised for the disruption and exuded hope that Lineker would be back on air soon.

    “We are working very hard to resolve this situation and make sure we get output on air,” Davie told the BBC.

    “I am in listening mode. I want to make sure that going forward we have a workable solution. To be clear, success for me is: Gary gets back on air,” he said.

    There is mounting pressure on the top team to resolve the crisis after the BBC, which operates through a taxpayer-funded licence fee, said it considered Lineker posting such views on social media as a breach of its impartiality guidelines.

    UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt told Sky News that he “profoundly” disagrees with Lineker’s comments, but stopped short of demanding an apology.

    “If you believe in BBC independence, then it’s not for the Chancellor or any other government minister to say how these issues are resolved,” said Hunt.

    “The central thing that people want to know is that there isn’t any kind of political agenda in the way the BBC goes about its business, which I’m not saying there is, but that is the confidence people need to have,” he added.

    The Conservative government attacked Lineker’s Nazi comparison of a planned illegal migrant crackdown as unacceptable, with UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman among the ministers who branded it “offensive”.

    “I think it is, from a personal point of view, to hear that characterisation is offensive because my husband is Jewish, my children are therefore direct descendants from people who were murdered in gas chambers during the Holocaust,” Braverman told the BBC in the wake of the row earlier this week.

    “To kind of throw out those kind of flippant analogies diminishes the unspeakable tragedy that millions of people went through and I don’t think anything that is happening in the UK today can come close to what happened in the Holocaust. So, I find it a lazy and unhelpful comparison to make,” she said.

    This is the latest controversy over the role of the 100-year-old BBC after the broadcaster’s neutrality came under recent scrutiny over revelations that its chairman, Richard Sharp a donor for the governing Conservative Party was involved in the arrangement of a loan for the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2021, weeks before he was appointed to the BBC post on the government’s recommendation.

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    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • BBC faces celebrity revolt, political pressure amid Gary Lineker dispute

    BBC faces celebrity revolt, political pressure amid Gary Lineker dispute

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    The BBC faces a spiraling revolt by its top sporting presenters amid a row over the broadcaster’s impartiality standards, after star football host Gary Lineker was chastised for tweets criticizing the U.K. government’s new asylum policies.

    Calls of hypocrisy were also leveled at the U.K. broadcaster on Saturday, as Labour leader Keir Starmer accused the BBC of “caving in” to the demands of Conservative Party members.

    The broadcaster’s sporting coverage was plunged into uncertainty due to a boycott from a group of hosts and co-hosts who disagreed with the BBC for attempting to penalize “Match of the Day” presenter Lineker for his recent comments against what he called the government’s “immeasurably cruel policy” on immigration. He has been told to “step back” from his BBC presenting duties.

    In a March 7 tweet, the ex-England international footballer compared the U.K. government’s new policy on illegal migrants with the language of Nazi Germany, prompting a backlash from Conservative MPs and members of the government. The BBC says the tweet violated its impartiality standards.

    The U.K.’s new asylum policy would block undocumented migrants from entering the country on small vessels. The bill has been condemned by the United Nations, which said it amounts to an “asylum ban.”  

    “Match of the Day” — a flagship BBC football show for Premier League fans — found itself without regulars Ian Wright, Alan Shearer, Jermaine Jenas, Micah Richards and Jermain Defoe, who all pledged to stand by Lineker in the dispute. The BBC said “Match of the Day” would be aired Saturday without presenters or pundits.

    Popular broadcasts “Football Focus” and “Final Score” have also been deleted from the BBC’s schedule this weekend, after Alex Scott, Kelly Somers and Jason Mohammad all backed Lineker’s corner. BBC Radio 5 Live’s football build-up transmission was ditched minutes before airing, as other leading hosts and pundits joined forces against the broadcaster’s disciplining of Lineker.

    BBC Director General Tim Davie apologised for the disruptions and said “we are working very hard to resolve the situation.” In an interview with BBC News late Saturday, Davie said “success for me is getting Gary back on air.” Davie said he would “absolutely not” be resigning over the row.

    The BBC boss said he was prepared to review impartiality rules for freelance staff like Lineker.

    In an earlier statement, the BBC said it considers Lineker’s “recent social media activity to be a breach of our guidelines.”

    “The BBC has decided that he will step back from presenting Match of the Day until we’ve got an agreed and clear position on his use of social media,” according to the statement.

    A five-year contract that Lineker signed in 2020 includes guarantees to adhere to the BBC’s impartiality code. He is on a reported £1.35 million-a-year salary.

    Labour’s Starmer accused the BBC of pandering to the demands of the Conservative Party on Saturday.

    “The BBC is not acting impartially by caving in to Tory MPs who are complaining about Gary Lineker,” Starmer told broadcasters at Welsh Labour’s conference in Llandudno, Wales. “They got this one badly wrong and now they’re very, very exposed.”

    GettyImages 1248019674
    Labour leader Keir Starmer accused the broadcaster of caving in to Tory demands | Jason Roberts/Getty Images

    Conservative MP Nadine Dorries tweeted on Friday that Lineker needs to decide whether he is “a footie presenter or a member of the Labour Party.”

    Prime Minister Rishi Sunak defended the government’s asylum policy in a statement on Saturday and said the impartiality dispute is for the broadcaster and the presenter to sort out.

    “I hope that the current situation between Gary Lineker and the BBC can be resolved in a timely manner, but it is rightly a matter for them, not the government,” Sunak said in the statement.

    Liverpool football club manager Jürgen Klopp backed Lineker when asked about the controversy on Saturday.

    “I cannot see why you would ask someone to step back for saying that,” Klopp said. “Everybody wants to be so concerned about doing things in the right manner, saying the right stuff. If you don’t do that then you create a shitstorm, it is a really difficult world to live in,” he said.

    “If I understand it right, it is a message, an opinion about human rights and that should be possible to say,” Klopp said.

    The links between the BBC and the U.K.’s governing Conservative Party run deep. The corporation’s chairman, Richard Sharp, was previously outed as having facilitated an £800,000 loan for Boris Johnson, the former U.K. prime minister. On Saturday, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey called for Sharp to resign.

    The communications officer for former Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May — Robbie Gibb — has sat on the BBC board as a non-executive director since 2021. Current BBC Director General Tim Davie previously stood as a councilor for the Conservative Party in Hammersmith, a London constituency.



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )