On March 23, 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic turned life in the UK (and everywhere else) upside down, the British government imposed a historic stay-at-home order. Daily mail“Britain on Lockdown”, de Subway headline explained. It wasn’t just the tabloids: Sky News also called the order a closure. However, the BBC used a different language to describe what was happening in everyday life – “curbs” and “restrictions” – an “Hello everyone – Dst asks if we can avoid the word ‘lockdown’. I was told that the message will be that they want to continue urging people to stay home but they are not talking about enforcement at the moment,” a senior editor wrote to correspondents in an email titled “IMPORTANT ADVICE – language rebroadcast.” The protector reported Tuesday.
That memo is part of a handful of leaked emails and WhatsApp messages from 2020 to 2022 that The guardian “While some BBC insiders are concerned that the company has been subjected to too much government intimidation in recent years,” the newspaper said. Another post, from October 2021, shows an editor in chief asking journalists to adjust coverage of the Labor Party, amid a No. 10 complaint. “D St complain we don’t reflect Labour’s mess of plan b online That is, Ashworth said it earlier this week and then backtracked. Can we crank up the skepticism on this a bit?” the message reads, referring to the tightening COVID restrictions that Jonathan AsworthLabour’s shadow health secretary, initially suggested. “Downing Street argued that Labor kept changing its position on Covid restrictions and a line was added to the online BBC story to that effect,” The protector reports.
In a statement, the BBC insisted it “makes its own independent editorial decisions and none of these messages show otherwise”, calling the leaked information “selective messages out of context” that “do not accurately reflect editorial decision-making But the apparent pressure being exerted by Downing Street comes at a time when the BBC’s relationship with the government is under scrutiny following the high-profile suspension of its biggest sports presenter, Gary Linkerabout his tweet criticizing immigration policy.
Lineker, a former England football star turned sports broadcaster, called Plans to crack down on migrants crossing the English Channel “an immeasurably brutal policy targeting the most vulnerable in a language not unlike the one used in Germany in the 1930s.” Minister Rishi Sunakwho told reporters that Lineker’s comment was “not acceptable” and that it was “disappointing” to see “that kind of rhetoric” from someone “whose salary is funded by hard-working British [license fee] payers”, referring to the national TV tax which mainly funds the BBC. The BBC said Lineker was “called out” for his comments, and two days after the tweet, Lineker suspended and said he would “step back” from his football show Match of the day until there was an “agreed and clear stance on his use of social media”. working while their colleague was suspended, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The BBC ended Lineker’s suspension on Monday Tim Davythe company’s director general, said in a statement that the BBC would “launch an independent review into its social media guidelines, with a particular focus on freelancers outside of news and current affairs such as Lineker.” The saga “has jeopardized the BBC’s independence, and its reputation,” Clare Endersa London-based media researcher, told the New York Times“That’s a shame because this is essentially a dispute over whether the BBC can impose its social media guidelines on a contractor.”
More broadly, however, the episode talked about a “transatlantic debate over journalistic objectivity,” such as Columbia Journalism Review‘s Jon Allsop so to speak, one that boils down to whether journalists can share their views without compromising the perceived neutrality of the newsrooms they work for.” The controversial Lineker depends on the dynamics inherent to the BBC, with its public funding model and mandate to be politically impartial,” noted Allsop Time notes, both Davie and Richard Sharpthe chairman of the board of directors of the BBC, are associated with the Conservative Party. Sharp faces an ongoing review over whether he failed to properly disclose his role in helping the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson securing a loan weeks before Sharp was recommended for the job. Sharp has denied any involvement in arranging a loan for Johnson and resisted calls for him to resign. Those calls have been rekindled amid perceptions that the BBC bowed to government pressure to suspend Lineker.
