Culture Match Of The Day

Just jotting down some quick thoughts on the Gary Lineker fiasco. Like practically everyone else, I call bullshit on the part of the BBC on this one.

Ordinarily Match of the Day is something I find less interesting than the defecation rate of extinct tortoises, but it’s fun to see a whole stream of pundits withdraw their support in solidarity with Lineker.

I mean, if a news reporter had expressed outrage at the “let’s kick refugees in the ribs !” policy*, which is near enough what it amounts to, then… there would be a case to be made. You can’t have actual journalists venting their opinions during the news reports because that clearly starts down the road to Fox News, which is something to fight against tooth and tail.

* If the government had made an egregiously racist law and Lineker spoke out against it, would he have been similarly censored ? One would hope that demanding "impartiality" here would be seen as abhorrent, because it is.

But Lineker is a sports presenter, in this case expressing himself on on Twitter. Not a journalist. Not a professional political commentator. Not expressing his opinion on his sports program. So yeah, there’s a very strong case to be made for strict impartiality among journalists, but this can hardly mean that the BBC gets to set strict rules about what all its employees can say in all circumstances - that’s just plainly unviable. Especially given the recent debacle over Sharp’s assistance to Boris “Watermelon Smiles” Johnson, this feels very much like “impartiality” is being used as a cover to say, “don’t criticise the government”. Which is tantamount to similar cases in which “free speech” really means, “shut up and let me have my racist diatribe”.

And just how far is this impartiality supposed to go, exactly ? The BBC employs several excellent satirists who routinely go considerably further than anything Lineker has said (e.g. Ian Hislop, Frankie Boyle). Is a special exemption granted for them ? Maybe, but if so, these rules ought to be stated very clearly, otherwise it becomes arbitrary.

I expect the Tories to come out with this crap about Lineker not knowing history for making a perfectly valid comparison, but I expect better from the BBC. Impartiality as an absolute is no more possible than free speech as an absolute - it literally can’t be done and it’s stupid to try. So where it can’t be maintained, I expect a sensible organisation to err on the side of caution by allowing criticism of those in power. That seems by far the most sensible default position to me.