The BBC‘s incoming chairman has yet to step foot on the corporation’s premises, but he has already waded into his first scandal.
Samir Shah, a long-time UK media executive, gave an unequivocal verdict on the latest social media posts of Gary Lineker, the BBC’s highest-paid presenter.
Shah said Lineker’s posts on Twitter (now X) this week mocking Conservative politicians appeared to break new social media rules put in place in September.
“I would imagine the BBC is now looking into that and considering its response,” Shah told Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee in a hearing that precedes his formal appointment.
Lineker signed a letter calling on the government to create a “fair new plan for refugees,” prompting an outcry among Conservative lawmakers, who said he was jeopardizing the BBC’s impartiality.
Lineker bit back at the comments in quote tweets to Jonathan Gullis MP and Grant Shapps, the UK’s defense secretary. “Jonathan hasn’t read the new guidelines….or, should I say, had someone read them to him?” he said to Gullis in an apparent joke about the lawmaker’s intellect.
Lineker mocked Shapps’ use of aliases before he entered Parliament. “A tad rich coming from someone who can’t even stick to one name. 4 chaps Shapps,” Lineker said after Shapps told him to “stop meddling” in public policy.
Shah said it was these messages, rather than the signing of the letter that appeared to be the issue. The BBC’s new rules, introduced following an enormous row over Lineker’s use of social media in March, state that star presenters should not criticize the character of individual politicians and should promote “civility in public discourse.”
Referring to the issue as a “psychodrama,” Shah said that repeated rows over Lineker’s posts were becoming damaging. “It doesn’t help anyone and it does damage to the reputation of BBC,” he said, hinting that he might look again at the corporation’s social media rules following the independent review by John Hardie over the summer.
Shah said: “What I would invite the [BBC] director general to do is to say: having gone through this particular thing, what his view is about whether or not the social media guidelines, as they currently stand, are delivering what they intended to do. I would interrogate that quite forcefully.”
He added: “I’d be keen to hear whether the media guidelines, as currently drawn up, are standing up to that test, or whether they need to be examined again.”
The BBC has not commented on Lineker’s tweets. On Monday, it said: “We aren’t going to comment on individuals or indeed individual tweets. While the guidance does allow people to talk about issues that matter to them, it is also clear that individuals should be civil and not call into question anyone’s character. We discuss issues that arise with presenters as necessary.”
Match of the Day host Lineker was suspended in March for tweeting that government asylum policy had echoes of Nazi Germany. He was swiftly reinstated three days later following a weekend of chaos, in which his colleagues effectively went on strike and BBC sports coverage fell off air.
He did not apologize for his tweet, which was a response to the government’s divisive “stop the boats” immigration policy. He described the policy as “immeasurably cruel” and accused the government of deploying language “that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s.”
Lineker is paid £1.35M ($1.7M) a year by the BBC.
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Source: DLine
