✍️ New Jobs and Crisis At The BBC ✍️ — March 13
Gary Linekar, Suella Braverman and the BBC's quest for impartiality
Hello folks! Happy Monday and welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom, home of the world's largest curated journalism jobs board. We handpick every single job, so you don’t have to.🤘
Today’s plan was to delve into whether we can trust mainstream media, but that was scuppered by the crisis engulfing the BBC. In a nutshell, the organization suspended football presenter Gary Linekar, after he likened the UK government’s new immigration policy to Germany in the 1930’s. Outrage by Conservative MPs and a clunky response from the BBC sent it into full crisis over the weekend, which we’ll dig into today. Next week, we’ll get into trust in mainstream media. Before we do, some quick housekeeping…
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Crisis At The BBC
A lot has taken place over the past week, and events continue to play out, so I’ll do my best to cut through everything and explain what’s happened, the context around such events, and how the BBC got itself into this mess in the first place.
Like with everything, there is no black-and-white answer, and the in-between is filled with an incredible amount of nuance.
For context, the BBC has existed since 1922 and is majority funded by the taxpayer. I grew up watching everything on the BBC, from live sport, to wildlife documentaries, to political programming. I liked how one organization could be a hub that catered for so many interests, and one that could separate politics from sport from entertainment. Unfortunately, I think those times are over.
So with that, let’s get to it.
The Tweets and The Bill
On Tuesday March 7, UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman tweeted a video explaining the rationale behind her new Illegal Migration Bill. In the video, Braverman makes the claim that the UK’s asylum system is overrun, and ends with “Enough is enough. We must stop the boats.”
BBC Sport presenter Gary Linekar commented on the video, refuted Braverman’s claims and compared her language to that of Germany in the 1930s. Cue the storm…
As The Guardian’s Barney Ronay points out, Linekar’s mistake might have been his reference to Nazi Germany, which is a spark plug for automatic offense and immediate disapproval no matter the situation. Although would as much light be shone on the government’s policy without it?
For the record, I grew up jewish, had my bar mitzvah and still love a smoked salmon bagel. Members of my family in Lithuania starved to death on the side of the road somewhere between Kaunas and Vilnius, trying to escape the Lithuanian Holocaust. I am not offended by Linekar’s comparison, and I think it’s time to stop being horrified every time someone mentions Germany in the ‘30s.
I’ll explain.
Linekar specifically compared the language used by the two governments, not the Holocaust itself. I won’t pretend to be an historian of that period, but the Nazis began controlling the media message long before it committed some of its worst atrocities. I also know that countless governments around the world since 1945 have used inflammatory language toward immigrants. While the vast majority have stopped short of genocide, the words they use can have a trickle-down affect. In England and Wales last year, hate crimes increased by a staggering 26% from the year before, to 155,841. Again, Linekar specifically highlighted the language being used.
Remember, it was only seven years ago that another three-word slogan was at the heart of a winning Brexit campaign: ‘Take Back Control’. Individually, whether it’s ‘Enough Is Enough’, or ‘Stop The Boats’, these slogans can become part of the conversational fabric. Piece them together, and the government’s strategy becomes clearer. And it’s not just the Conservatives at work — Labour leader Keir Starmer has pledged a ‘Take Back Control’ bill if he wins at the next general election, though this is more about dissolution than immigration.
Regardless of mistakes, it’s not just Linekar that believes the new bill is immeasurably cruel. It’s been rejected as “unworkable” by several refugee charities, and according to the European Convention on Human Rights — a treaty the UK helped draft and signed in 1951 — Braverman’s aptly named Illegal Migration Bill might indeed be illegal. She even admits it on her first page.
I’m still not saying the comparison to the Nazis is correct. That’s Linekar’s opinion, which gets at the heart of this specific episode: the BBC’s drive for impartiality.
The BBC
On Friday March 10, the BBC announced Linekar would “step back” from presenting its flagship football show Match of the Day, until they could agree on his social media use. The BBC was adamant that its decision was made independently and not swayed by pressure from a growing chorus of Conservative MPs and right-wing media voicing their opposition to Linekar’s tweet.
Linekar disputed the BBC’s statement and as 5 News and former BBC presenter Dan Walker read live on air, Linekar had in fact been told to step back. Alan Shearer and Ian Wright, two of England's most respected footballers who were scheduled to also appear on Saturday's MOTD, then announced they would not appear on the show in a mark of solidarity with Linekar. The boycott continued as a host of other pundits and commentators also pulled out, leaving the BBC in disarray.
The BBC has been mired in an existential crisis for years now, with both the left and right bashing it for perceived political bias — also known as the Hostile Media Effect. The BBC receives the majority of its funding by the taxpayer, by way of the TV license, which is where I think the deepest problem is rooted.
Per the House of Lords Library, “The BBC is principally funded through the license fee paid by UK households. In 2021/22 this generated £3.8bn. In addition, the BBC’s commercial operations, such as BBC Studios, provide supplementary income. In 2021/22, the BBC made £1.7bn through its commercial operations. The BBC World Service also receives some funding from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.”
This is where I have sympathy for the BBC’s attempts to operate an impartial news service, or as close to it as possible. Fundamentally, the public needs a service that gives them a truthful and accurate account of what is happening, especially in today’s climate of news and information overflow. But I’m just not confident in the BBC’s, or anyone’s for that matter, ability to actually do this. This is where the sympathy ends and, with it, the sentimentalism over what the BBC once was.
That also brings us onto the one word that I think unites the anger and ire directed at the BBC from both sides: hypocrisy.
The BBC has been no different from to news outlets in the sense that it has historically been perceived as skewing left. Regardless of whether that’s fact or fiction, it’s inevitably given the right fuel to feel an injustice. On the left, there is growing concern that, after almost 13 years of Conservative rule, the BBC is increasingly being influenced by the government.
The central concerns lay with the fact the BBC’s Director General, Tim Davie, was deputy chairman of the Hammersmith and Fulham Conservative party in the 1990s, and stood unsuccessfully as a councillor in 1993 and 1994. Then there’s BBC Chairman Richard Sharp, who donated £400,000 to the Conservatives, facilitated an £800,000 loan for former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and was reportedly mentored by current Conservative PM Rishi Sunak during their time at investment bank Goldman Sachs.
The Tory voices who wanted Linekar off air got their wish, but their opportunism backfired due to the wave of additional scrutiny their migration bill is now receiving, the exact opposite of what you want when you’re a ruling government. For the BBC, the hypocrisy of its social media guidelines, however well-intentioned, has flung open the doors of its own wardrobe that’s full of skeletons.
This is just my interpretation of events, and I’d love to hear what you think. This will help me immensely to understand such an important and divisive issue.
What Next?
As I was putting the finishing touches on this newsletter, it was announced that Linekar will return to present Match of the Day this Saturday. There will also be plenty more to this story in the coming hours and days, so below I’ve included some links for further reading. Thanks so much for supporting as always and I’ll see you again on Friday!
Thank you for such thorough analysis - I really appreciate the way you’ve explained it all. I find the funding model interesting as in Australia, our public broadcaster is also taxpayer funded but not through a direct fee like a licence fee but as a cut of overall taxes. We still face a lot of public criticism and have strict guidelines on impartiality but I wonder how much that out of pocket feeling of paying the fee contributes. I definitely feel the hypocrisy idea is at the heart of a lot of the anger. And I’m really not sure whether freelancers in a non-news role should be held to the same impartiality standards as the news team. Lots to consider.