Repost leads broadcaster to retread impartiality debate
BBC 'Match of the Day' presenter Gary Lineker's 30-year stint at the British public broadcaster has ended about 13 months early–and without a payout–after he apologised for sharing a post he accepted had "offensive references".
"I would never knowingly share anything antisemitic," said the former England footballer after reposting a two-minute video about Zionism that featured an emoji of a rat, a visual device also used in Nazi Germany to depict Jewish people.
That's not the first time Mr Linker, the BBC, and 1930s Germany have featured in the same story:
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?
— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) March 7, 2023
Mr Linker tweeted about immigration policy in March 2023.
The BBC first took Mr Lineker off air after he criticised a UK government immigration policy online, comparing its rhetoric to "that used by Germany in the 30s".
The 2023 tweet sparked days of national coverage about the BBC's impartiality as a public broadcaster, staff rights to freedom of speech and political participation, and Mr Lineker's obligations as someone who is not a journalist–or even a BBC employee.
His suspension led to strike action by some staff, disrupting the broadcaster's sports coverage and taking out some programs entirely until BBC boss Tim Davie publicly apologised.
He let Mr Lineker back on air and launched an independent review that found "there is no working, de facto or agreed list" of who the BBC's social media impartiality rules apply to, or why.
The broadcaster changed its policy to specifically cover freelance, 'non-news presenters' like Mr Lineker, letting them opine on political issues outside of elections, but never on specific parties or politicians.
Mr Lineker would continue to make public comments after reportedly missing out on a new contract in 2024, instead agreeing to an extension that would see him leave at the 2026 World Cup.
When asked about that deal in an April BBC News interview, Mr Lineker said: "Well, perhaps they want me to leave."
In February, he signed an open letter asking the BBC to re-upload a Gaza documentary it had taken down after reports it was narrated by a Hamas official's child.
And then came the rat emoji.
There don't appear to be any rumblings of a strike this time.
Days before Mr Lineker's repost, Mr Davie spoke in northern England about what he's calling a 'trust crisis'.
He invoked a survey that recorded less than half of UK participants saying they trust most people, and research that found a "direct relationship between lack of trust and a sense of grievance, active distrust, which creates a re-enforcing negative spiral".
Those conflicting views reveal a growing issue with no clear answer, as the BBC's own 2023 review found similarly divided public opinion on what impartiality looks like and where the line should be.
And, of course, this whole saga is eerily reminiscent of another Gaza-related public broadcasting controversy much closer to home.
We're still waiting for a federal judge's verdict on how that social media post was handled.
