When is a climbdown not a climbdown? When it’s a BBC climbdown.
“This looks like a complete climbdown by the BBC,” media correspondent David Sillito put to his boss, BBC director-general Tim Davie, a wiry ex-Pepsi executive now enjoying a thriving career as a committed impartiality cop and Match of the Day killer.
“I don’t think so. I’ve always said we need to take proportionate action,” responded Davie, gamely ignoring the fact that the whole trigger for this grilling was an action so obviously disproportionate even the Conservative ministers who had called for it were starting to fret about the blowback.
On Friday, Davie’s wildly stupid tactic was to kick Gary Lineker off air. On Monday, the Destroyer of Football was releasing a five-paragraph statement, the first of which contained the words “I apologise”.
The BBC’s own reporting staff, who presumably have some intel on this, seem convinced that BBC management was taken aback by the solidarity displayed by Lineker’s BBC Sport colleagues in a succession of schedule-disrupting walkouts dubbed by one Times source as their “I am Sportacus!” moment.
“You just made a catastrophic mistake. You didn’t realise what was going to happen,” Sillito posited.
So why did the BBC first inflate the British government’s concerted criticism of Lineker’s tweets – by feverishly giving it top billing on its news bulletins – and then compound its self-engineered crisis by showing Lineker, its own man, a red card?
“No,” insisted Davie. “I think what we did was to make a choice to take action and out of that we have got to a point where we have agreed how to go forward.”
To be fair, Lineker, though retired for almost 30 years, is probably a touch more skilled at going forward than most. He also has a knack for being gracious, acknowledging that Davie “has an almost impossible job keeping everybody happy”.
But Davie, in his bid to rectify his prior heavy-handedness, hasn’t only apologised for the “difficult period” for staff, contributors, presenters and audiences, he has conceded that the BBC’s social media guidance, which he himself introduced in 2020, contains “grey areas”.
An independent review of these greyest of grey areas will now take place with Lineker’s official backing, and he will apparently abide by the current rules, to the extent anybody can discern what they are, until then.
The upshot is that Lineker – and his friends – will return to Match of the Day. BBC management can stop worrying about sport presenters, pundits and commentators not showing up for work and start worrying instead about local radio employees not showing up for work, what with that strike they have lined up for Wednesday.
Why are Irish companies shifting their stock listings to the United States?
So why did the BBC first inflate the British government’s concerted criticism of Lineker’s tweets – by feverishly giving it top billing on its news bulletins – and then compound its self-engineered crisis by showing Lineker, its own man, a red card?
Is it just addicted to drama?
Much attention has been given to Davie’s history within the Conservative Party as well as BBC chairman Richard Sharp’s many links to the party – one of which, his facilitation of a loan to former prime minister Boris Johnson, he failed to disclose.
But while “because they’re Tories” is certainly not an invalid answer, reaching automatically for it risks racing past another explanation common to many PR disasters: they’re idiots.
Don’t get me wrong, conspiracies and cock-ups are hardly mutually exclusive. It’s just sometimes the focus is a little too much on the conspiracy at the expense of the cock-up.
Davie’s huge error of judgment was his failure to realise that Lineker would never and could never agree to apologise for saying Suella Braverman’s “stop the boats” policy was “beyond awful” and “immeasurably cruel” or that it was being delivered in language “not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”.
That’s not something you can row back on. For Lineker to do so would have been tantamount to a betrayal of his own conscientiously held beliefs and principles.
The sense that Lineker was being picked on was so inescapable, broadcasting trade union Bectu spoke of “double standards”, while the National Union of Journalists warned of “profound damage” to the BBC’s reputation.
Two responses to this ridiculous affair, both of them posed as questions by people who either work or have worked for the BBC, seem especially pertinent.
“Difference between morals and politics. Are we allowed morals?” asked Cerys Matthews, the musician and BBC Radio 6 Music presenter.
“Has the BBC actually analysed Gary Lineker’s tweet? Because it is factually accurate,” tweeted satirist Armando Iannucci.
These questions reflect an even thornier matter than who must adhere to impartiality guidelines and that is which subjects are controversial or party-political enough to be covered by them. Over time, contested views become universal values and vice versa. But who gets to decide the boundaries here? Rishi Sunak?
In a political culture where authoritarianism seems to be not just creeping, but galloping, saying anything at all rapidly becomes a problem. And yet the extent to which silence on certain issues might be perceived as tacit acceptance of what is happening is rarely explored.
The complexities suggest a zero-tolerance attitude to impartiality breaches is self-defeating by design.
Impartiality isn’t just a quaint concept the BBC fancies trumpeting. For broadcasters, both in Britain and Ireland, it is a regulatory requirement. The idea that it should be thrown aside because the perception of it is simply too difficult to sustain is a fast-track to the Foxification of the news.
But neither does Tim Davie’s mission to make impartiality a “founding principle” of his tenure as director-general seem wise or doable. And even if it was, what price impartiality if it comes at the cost of decency and fairness?
The sense that Lineker was being picked on was so inescapable, broadcasting trade union Bectu spoke of “double standards”, while the National Union of Journalists warned of “profound damage” to the BBC’s reputation.
What this episode has also been is profoundly silly. In its futile appeasement of mischief-making Tories, the BBC walked into the trap of setting itself up in direct opposition to Lineker, guaranteeing that his compassionate stance would go viral. Surely, as a former marketer, Davie should have anticipated how bad this would be for the brand.
At the weekend, Swansea City fans held up a sign in support of Lineker’s stand against racism. Manchester City supporters had another proposal: Gary Lineker for prime minister. His stock is high.
In a new Twitter thread that mentions no specific policies – so quite possibly satisfies the obligation not to “take sides” – Lineker refers to the tolerance, generosity and empathy of others.
They are qualities that seem lacking at the heart of Westminster. Audiences can be forgiven for being confused about where the BBC stands on them, too.
