BBC was recently rocked on its heels by a self-manufactured controversy. Its programme, Match of the Day, is known, by the BBC’s own admission, as the ‘world’s most famous football show’. In it, former England captain, Gary Lineker, presents highlights of the day’s matches from the Premier League. He is joined by two pundits – currently Arsenal legend Ian Wright and Premier League all-time top scorer Newcastle’s Alan Shearer. Lineker is a star in his own right. He is reported to be BBC’s highest paid presenter, on a £6.75 million deal that runs until 2025.
Lineker is also an outspoken, forthright man with views of his own outside football. He bitterly criticised the British government’s divisive immigration policy regarding admitting refugees. ‘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?’ Lineker tweeted.
BBC moved swiftly to take Lineker off the air. It is not known if there were direct or indirect orders from the Conservative government, but the proactive nature of the BBC’s move was, to say the least, strange. A storm erupted. Shearer and Wright walked out of the show in solidarity and protest. Social media was incandescent with anger. Under immense pressure, BBC backed down. It reinstated Lineker.
BBC’s craven conduct underlines what lies at the heart of the corporation. BBC is funded by the British government through a licence fee raised from TV-owning households. Yet, it is ostensibly not under government control but is an autonomous body. BBC has always been equally under fire from Labour and Conservative parties. It is hard to say whether it has a Left bias or a Right bias.
What is undeniable is that it has an establishment bias. And it has never been shy of doing the establishment’s bidding. That is the supreme irony for an organisation that is so self-professedly, boastfully impartial.
Here is more. The current chair of BBC, Richard Sharp, is a Conservative Party donor. He allegedly arranged for a massive loan for Boris Johnson when he was prime minister. Under such circumstances, how do you fly the flag of objectivity? It is inexplicable how BBC was empowered to remove Lineker. The corporation has a policy that its staff on the news side cannot air their personal political views on social media platforms. But Lineker is a freelancer. He is a presenter of not news, but a football programme. Other non-news presenters have not been reined in for similar conduct. One can only assume that was because their views were not anti-Conservative government.
Around the same time of the Lineker fiasco, the Guardian reported that ‘the BBC has decided not to broadcast an episode of Sir David Attenborough’s flagship new series on British wildlife because of fears its themes of the destruction of nature would risk a backlash from Tory politicians and the rightwing press’. BBC denied the allegation. But mud does tend to stick.
The duplicity and hypocrisy of BBC is difficult to ignore. When it comes to foreign governments, the broadcaster dons its fearless, objective mask. It has gone all out in its criticism of former US president Donald Trump. And when the Indian government recently raised the matter of the BBC’s documentary on the role of Narendra Modi in the 2002 Gujarat riots, the corporation was quick to emphasise the vaunted impartiality and objectivity in its journalism and programming. When it comes to Britain, and its politicians, however, BBC shows a different face.
After these recent events, BBC has nowhere to hide. These incidents underscore the fact that, as the Guardian’s Jonathan Liew wrote, ‘a honeyed, romanticised BBC… has only ever really existed in the imagination’.
The writer is author of Thirteen Kinds of Love
