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Gary Lineker vs. BBC

Tony L said:

Superb response from James O’Brein on LBC. He nails it.
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It's a good piece but raises a few questions - are all arguments/POVs equivalent? And how can the BBC properly legislate for impartiality (an almost impossible task)?
 
Colin L said:
Clearly you have a very loose definition of what constitutes a journalist. She’s a mouthpiece for the Tory party. Client journalism personified.
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OK then, let's ban her for leaning too much towards the right. But then, you could sack half the Guardian's crew too.

Politics left and right are more and more leaning to the extremes, Brexit having worsened things considerably. That journalists follow suit is a logical evolution.
 
gintonic said:
being a voter who regularly expresses support for a particular political party through the ballot box should rule a candidate out.
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But (and this is important) elections are secret ballots and what individuals choose to do in the secrecy of the polling booth is nobody's business but their own. In a democracy, everyone is able (albeit not obliged) to cast a vote and ideally they will. It's one of those things that there are many (most?) who do so tribally without considering whether they might reasonably modify their behaviour. What can you do?

Now, if people are fundamentally driven by a specific political ideology to the extent that they join a party, activate for them, finance them or become an employee, their behaviour demonstrates more than a passing 5-yearly sympathy. I'd think this was a high enough bar for anyone to look askance at a candidate for, say Chairman of a public service broadcaster.
 
laughingboy said:
While I do think the BBC has a problem with Robbie Gibb, Tim Davie and Richard Sharp, I don't think it is all a simple matter of corruption.

There is also a level of timidity/cowardice about its News and Current affairs coverage. This article about John Sweeney (Buzzfeed) gives some background to how Sweeney left the BBC, for context; but I want to focus on his letter to Ofcom, dated Nov 2019. The accusations he made are as follows (note that they include investigations into Labour figures as well as right wingers):

"My concerns centre on the following programmes or films:
  • Our Panorama on far-right activist Tommy Robinson which should have been broadcast in February or March this year. It had fresh information on Robinson’s links with German far right sources and there was potential to explore how Robinson was being indirectly funded by Kremlin money. Robinson set out to intimidate the BBC. Not broadcast.
  • Our Newsnight investigation into Lord Mandelson which caused him to change his House of Lords’ register recording money he got from a Russian company connected to the mafiya. After a direction intervention by Mandelson’s friend, then BBC Head of News, James Harding, the investigation stopped. Not broadcast.
  • Our Newsnight investigation into the dubious connections between former Culture Secretary John Whittingdale MP and Dmitri Firtash, the pro-Kremlin oligarch currently fighting extradition to the United States. Not broadcast.
  • Our Newsnight investigation into Henley & Partners, a dodgy passport-selling firm which sought to silence Daphne Caruana Galizia before she was assassinated. Outside a H & P event in London I was physically assaulted by security for the Maltese PM. Inside a BBC presenter was doing a paid corporate gig for H&P. Not broadcast.
  • A Newsnight investigation into the pro-Russian sympathies of Labour spin doctor, Seumas Milne. Not commissioned. Not broadcast.
  • A Panorama on Roman Abramovich: made and completed. I did not work on this but know of it. Not broadcast.
  • A BBC News investigation into Brexit funder Arron Banks. I did not work on this but know of it. Not broadcast.
Please note that roughly in the same time frame BBC News – not Current Affairs - did broadcast investigations into Cliff Richards and Lord Bramall and Lord Brittan on the basis of a fantasist. Both investigations should never have been broadcast.

The BBC did broadcast films I made that were weakened by management. They include:
  • A series of Newsnight films into Arron Banks, the man who helped fund Brexit and Nigel Farage. Some were broadcast but the strength of the journalism was enfeebled by management. One, exploring Nigel Farage’s worries about Mr Banks’ connections to Russia, was not broadcast. A second, on Katya Banks and how she came to the United Kingdom, was not broadcast.
  • A Panorama on Russia called Taking On Putin. This was broadcast last year. In the course of making it the acting head of the BBC Moscow bureau told our Panorama team to leave the bureau though we had sensitive rushes on us and were being pursued by Moscow police. He then informed the Foreign Ministry that I had been filming without a press pass. Not giving me a press pass is a routine piece of administrative harassment by the Russian state. Our fixer was forced to leave Russia for good. It felt like our BBC Moscow colleagues saw the Kremlin as their friend and us as the enemy.
On all the films above I worked on, I sought to complain to BBC management about failures to broadcast or weakening of editorial stance. Most did not seriously engage with my complaints. One senior manager did not reply to four emails I sent asking for a meeting so we never spoke."
​
I'd summarise all of that as saying: the BBC is too easily bullied. Which is mostly how I see the events of last week, too.
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BBC=Broadcaster Backs CHAOS
 
sideshowbob said:
Orwell won a scholarship to Eton
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So did Boris Johnson.

I guess the difference is that Johnson seems to have spent his life desperately buying into the upper classes whereas Orwell was repelled by the class system.

Henry Cole and Joe Armon-Jones both went to Eton too. Perhaps the answer is to discourage Old Etonians from going anywhere the levers of power and instead tinker with old motorbikes and form groovy jazz combos. I reckon the world would be a better place.
 
paulfromcamden said:
So did Boris Johnson.

I guess the difference is that Johnson seems to have spent his life desperately buying into the upper classes whereas Orwell was repelled by the class system.

Henry Cole and Joe Armon-Jones both went to Eton too. Perhaps the answer is to discourage Old Etonians from going anywhere the levers of power and instead tinker with old motorbikes and form groovy jazz combos. I reckon the world would be a better place.
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Orwell/Blair went a bit authoritarian anti-leftist after Spain though.
 
Weekender said:
Not the same....Ms K works for the BBC and is meant to uphold impartiality.
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As I always say, a country's official broadcaster always bears the colour of the govt in place, in every single country of the world. After an election, putting the 'right people' in place always tops the list of first acts of a new government, no matter whether it was elected or enforced. We can't change this, it's the usual way, better get used to it.

Labour will win the next GE, and many current members of the Board at the BBC will have to pack their things. And Laura Kuenssberg probably.
 
paulfromcamden said:
Perhaps the answer is to discourage Old Etonians from going anywhere the levers of power and instead tinker with old motorbikes and form groovy jazz combos. I reckon the world would be a better place.
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But isn't the British public school system specifically designed to produce an exalted class who would be the future manipulators of the levers of power? 29% of Westminster MPs were privately educated (v. 7% of the public at large) and 21% went to Oxbridge and a further 33% to another Russell Group University :

https://leapscholar.com/blog/russell-group-universities-uk-list-of-college/

This is changing, but slowly. Judging by the Tory Front Bench, the Old Boys Network is still very much in charge.
 
Rejoice at Lineker’s victory over the BBC and the right. Then learn the lessons for battles to come
Owen Jones
The BBC’s humiliating climbdown over its attempted silencing of Gary Lineker is a milestone. For years, emboldened rightwingers have succeeded in driving the national political conversation ever further in their direction. They’ve achieved this in two ways: first, by treating progressive political opinions as illegitimate; and second, by simultaneously claiming that it’s rightwingers who are really being silenced, a truly shameless spectacle of crybullying.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/14/gary-lineker-bbc-rightwing-national-debate
 
gavreid said:
It's those Fettes College old boys you need to worry about ;)
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Aye indeed Gav.

Orwell is my favourite writer, 1984 is probably the best book I've ever read, I read it about six times on the trot in Spain one year we were on holiday, couldn't put it down at the time.
 
tones said:
But isn't the British public school system specifically designed to produce an exalted class who would be the future manipulators of the levers of power?
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It absolutely is. That's kind of the flaw in my plan...

I just checked to see if my school had produced any monsters as it was a moderately posh grammar (with two affiliated freemasons lodges!) and was pleasantly surprised to learn that Jeff Beck went there. I never knew!
 
gavreid said:
Rejoice at Lineker’s victory over the BBC and the right. Then learn the lessons for battles to come
Owen Jones
The BBC’s humiliating climbdown over its attempted silencing of Gary Lineker is a milestone. For years, emboldened rightwingers have succeeded in driving the national political conversation ever further in their direction. They’ve achieved this in two ways: first, by treating progressive political opinions as illegitimate; and second, by simultaneously claiming that it’s rightwingers who are really being silenced, a truly shameless spectacle of crybullying.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/14/gary-lineker-bbc-rightwing-national-debate
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Lovely word, crybullying, hadn't seen before!
 
paulfromcamden said:
So did Boris Johnson.

I guess the difference is that Johnson seems to have spent his life desperately buying into the upper classes whereas Orwell was repelled by the class system.

Henry Cole and Joe Armon-Jones both went to Eton too. Perhaps the answer is to discourage Old Etonians from going anywhere the levers of power and instead tinker with old motorbikes and form groovy jazz combos. I reckon the world would be a better place.
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Is it not the case that Johnson failed to get a scholarship, and then his dad intervened and sweet talked them round?

Sure I remember reading/hearing that on the radio.
 
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