Gary Lineker and Human Rights
This is not just about the Government vs the BBC, it is about something fundamental — a human’s right to speak their opinion.
Welcome to the random Me in the Middle Podcast. In the last week, the political establishment has been torturing itself because a football commentator has dared to criticise the government. But this story is more important than perhaps some realise, for this is not just about the BBC, it is about human rights.
There is a long history of badly timed or political comment made by BBC staff or those associated with the BBC that predates not just Gary Lineker’s tenure at Match of the Day, but his birth too.
Years ago, I met Alvar Lidell, the famous BBC Radio Newsreader during the Second World War. I was a very junior sound engineer at a radio studio in London’s West End. He told us the story of how after weeks of losing battles, we won one. He couldn’t stop himself, and when he read the news out at the next bulletin, he added the words, “and Jolly good show too.”
Even then, when we were at War with Germany and the Axis Alliance, he had a short suspension for his misdemeanour. News readers must not comment.
There are good reasons for this policy, and they are not just about perceived bias. Mostly, it’s because the newsreader, and even the journalist, must tell the story, bring the news to the listener, but they must not BECOME the story. It is why they used to be called reporters rather than journalists.
That is all well and good, but it is rather utopian, and nobody has stuck to it properly for a long time. Not even back then!
There is a difference between editorial balance and an individual having an opinion. The BBC has a huge staff, and their opinions play across the political landscape, just like the population from where they are drawn. To try and pretend otherwise by shutting people up doesn’t work, it doesn’t make sense.
It is perfectly possible to ensure editorial balance in BBC News while admitting that journalists might have opinions of their own, and even more so non-news presenters.
Ed Balls, the former Labour shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented some great documentaries about trade with Europe. And it is blindingly clear where he is politically. Nobody complained.
The problem here is NOT Gary Lineker. The problem is the BBC trying to walk a tightrope that is impossible for anyone. They walk it because they are worried about their future, especially under a government where some MPs would like to see the BBC dead and buried. And because they are trying to weather accusations of bias from a sad little minority of miserable gits who are so biased themselves that they blinded by it.
Peter Hobday, once a presenter on the BBC Today programme, told me after he left the BBC that he was going to vote for the first time in years. He hadn’t felt he could during his time as a political journalist at the Beeb. I thought that was terrible. Voting, like voicing your opinions, is a fundamental human right. Now, the BBC didn’t insist he didn’t vote, this was his choice and he was the odd one out, but that does demonstrate the pressure that has always pushed down on the BBC and it’s attempts to remain as balanced as possible.
The BBC must learn to IGNORE the criticism levied against them and their people. Like they used to many years ago.
They must stand up as the great broadcaster that they have always been simply BECAUSE they are a broad church of opinions.
Talking of which, you don’t get much more political than a religion, and yet presenters are allowed to wear their gods where everyone can see them. Remember, religions, by their very design, are tyrannies. No one voted in their god.
The current fiasco shows how hypocritical is the entire political establishment. How twisted, how two-faced, and how weak and paranoid it is.
And the BBC is playing to them because it thinks it has no choice.
But there is more at stake here. Despite the BBC not wanting journalists to become the story, and I understand that, I am uncomfortable with the notion that in a free society someone is told that they cannot express a political opinion, even a tasteless one.
It should be a basic human right. It IS a human right. Even prisoners are allowed to voice opinions. Some have fought for the rights of prisoners in prison while still prisoners. That is pretty political.
And worse still than the BBC feeling it must gag human beings, voters, who just happen to work for the BBC (and other companies have similar rules in their contracts), we have politicians who demand that the BBC fire staff who dare to raise their voice against political parties, even those not in power. That also is not new. Anti-BBC statements and accusations of Bias have come from across the political divide over the years.
Gary Lineker has every right to criticise government policy. He has that right as a voter, as a citizen, and even just because he is a human being, and human beings have rights.
Though I do wonder if he would have had criticism or praise from the Home Secretary had he supported the new immigration policy. What do you reckon?
Well, perhaps I can heap coals on the fire. With some MPs suggesting that Lineker should lose his job, I am reminded of the Russian government and how it also tries to silence critics. The very same politicians who want to scalp the BBC, who think it has no right to criticise the government, are quick to condemn Putin’s handling of Russian media and celebrities when it suits them.
It sounds to me that some MPs in our house of commons would like Putin’s power over the Media.
But then, quite a few over the years have seen human rights as an “inconvenience” that the government should have the right to sweep aside when it gets in the way of some new policy. Remember that the next time an MP complains about the European Convention on Human Rights. The same rights that our government complain get in the way of them dealing with a prisoner, ALSO protect you. If they can take that prisoner’s rights away, then they can take yours.
And just in, John Caudwell, founder of Phones 4U and major Conservative Party donor, has said: “But as British taxpayers pay his salary, he should be promoting Britain not comparing the country to Nazi Germany. That’s unpatriotic and damaging to Britain’s image!”
Well, John, I can think of few things MORE like Nazi Germany than saying a citizen is “unpatriotic” to criticise government policy — whoever pays them! What sort of society do you want to live in?
As the crisis deepens, with it affecting sports coverage across the BBC as others come out in support of Lineker, it is time that the licence payers of this country stood up WITH the BBC and told the government and the opposition to worry about their OWN corrupt, miserable house, to get THAT in order, and to stop firing pathetic rockets at OUR national broadcaster and its very human presenters.
Bye-bye.
