Gary Lineker's MOTD exclusion shines light on BBC's 'impartiality' issues in massive own goal
The former England captain was removed from Saturday's Match of the Day after his comments on UK government policy. Colleagues soon mobilised in a show of solidarity
There were no opening titles. There was no music. There was no presenter. There were no pundits and no commentators. There were no interviews with players or managers. There was no analysis. No laughs. No fun. It was Match of the Day – but not as we knew it.
When the BBC announced on Friday that Gary Lineker was “stepping back” from Saturday’s show following his comments on social media earlier this week about the government’s latest policy on migrant boats, they cannot have imagined it would go this badly. But it is a situation entirely of their own making.
Let’s start at the beginning. On Tuesday, Lineker reacted to the UK government’s announcement that any migrant entering illegally will be sent back to their home country or to “a safe third country, like Rwanda”. The former England striker described the policy as “beyond awful” and in a reply underneath his initial tweet, he added: “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.”
That night, the BBC opened their News at 10 broadcast by discussing Lineker’s tweets. Not the government’s highly controversial and inhumane plans to remove refugees and send them back despite the fact that there are virtually no legal routes left for asylum seekers to enter the country, but the views of a former footballer who is England’s top scorer at World Cups and who now happens to be a popular presenter.
Although he had reporters waiting outside his house, Lineker said on Thursday he was relieved that the story was dying down. “It’s been an interesting couple of days,” he wrote on Twitter. “Happy that this ridiculously out of proportion story seems to be abating and very much looking forward to presenting @BBCMOTD on Saturday.”
But on Friday, the BBC asked him to apologise for his remarks and basically backtrack. When he said no, the decision was taken to remove him from Saturday’s Match of the Day. “We have said that we consider his recent social media activity to be a breach of our guidelines,” the Corporation said in a statement. “The BBC has decided that he will step back from presenting Match of the Day until we’ve got an agreed and clear position on his use of social media.” Essentially, for airing views they did not seem to like.
This is the same BBC whose chairman, Richard Sharp, helped former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson obtain a secret personal loan. The same BBC whose director general Tim Davie stood as a councillor for the Tories in Hammersmith in 1993 and 1994, and was deputy chairman of the Hammersmith and Fulham Conservative party in the 1990s. The same BBC that turned a blind eye to radical right-wing opinions from several other high-profile employees in the past, including Andrew Neil, Sir Alan Sugar and Jeremy Clarkson.
Lineker should never have been the story. He isn’t the story. But after the BBC shifted the spotlight away from the politics and the policy and onto one of their own employees (who is a freelancer, by the way), they shot themselves in the foot.
What followed was remarkable. After it was announced Lineker would not be involved in Saturday’s Match of the Day, former England team-mate Ian Wright said he would not be appearing on the show either. “Everybody knows what Match of the Day means to me, but I’ve told the BBC I won’t be doing it tomorrow,” he wrote on Twitter. “Solidarity.”
Alan Shearer came next. Then Alex Scott, Jermaine Jenas, Mark Chapman and Micah Richards. By Friday night, the BBC was forced to put out a statement saying that Match of the Day would go ahead on Saturday, but without a presenter or pundits.
Later, the show’s six commentators released a joint statement in which they said they would not be taking part in the programme, either. It was presumed that the BBC would just use the World Feed, but apparently MOTD did not have the rights. By this point, it was a fiasco.
There was no Football Focus on Saturday and no Final Score either as Scott, Kelly Somers, Jason Mohammad and Glenn Murray joined the boycott. Radio 5 Live’s flagship football show also had to be canned as Chapman, Dion Dublin and Colin Murray refused to work. There were plenty of others as well, too many to name.
By the time Match of the Day was to be broadcast for a much-reduced 20 minutes on Saturday night, Davie had given an interview to BBC News in which he said he hoped Lineker would be “back on air soon” and called the 62-year-old presenter the “the best in the business”.
The whole saga represents a huge embarrassment for the BBC and the best thing the Corporation can do now is to reinstate Lineker as soon as possible in order to avoid further disruption, chaos and damage to their reputation. Otherwise, the boycott will continue and it could also extend to areas beyond the sports section.
It is also time for some soul-searching for an institution still funded in the UK by license payers, an organisation once held in high regard throughout much of the world. If the BBC want impartiality, Gary Lineker should be able to air his opinions on his own social media channels. That, after all, is free speech. And many have noted that, had the former England captain praised the government’s migrant boats policy this week, he would surely have been sat in his seat presenting MOTD as usual on Saturday night. It is almost certainly true.
Ironically, taking Lineker off air on the state’s national broadcaster is also akin to the kind of censorship which did take place in 1930s Germany, and no good has come from it for the BBC. By removing their presenter, the Corporation delivered a poor product in their sports coverage this weekend and shone a beaming light on their own ‘impartiality’ in the process. Or lack of it. By seeking to silence one of England’s greatest-ever goalscorers, they succeeded only in scoring a massive own goal.
Worst of all, the way in which Lineker has been made the story’s focus by the BBC – pressured by a failing government in a country where little is working right now – smacks of distraction tactics by both. Which brings us back to the game itself. Although politics and sport were and will always be intertwined, football is supposed to be an enjoyable distraction from all the other stuff. Hopefully, it soon will be again.