How to conclude the BBC’s Lineker ‘psychodrama’

The more that MPs pressed Samir Shah for his views on Gary Lineker’s social media posts the more it sounded like the Chair-Elect of the BBC didn’t just think the football presenter had broken the rules Samir Shah wanted the system changed less than three months after it was announced.

“We need to find a solution to this”  he told his fourth questioner on Lineker, Clive Efford MP, at the pre-appointment hearing of the Culture Committee. “It has being going on for too long and it may be that the social media guidelines once again need to be looked at to make sure we somehow get this out of the public eye’. Dr Shah wanted to bring an end to what he called a ‘psychodrama’. 

’Don’t criticise the character of individual politicians in the UK’ seems a clear enough piece of BBC guidance to me and I’m not sure changing it would ‘get this out of the public eye’. The real choice is between enforcement and abolition.  The enforcement guidelines say  ‘For contract freelancers/presenters who are found to have breached the guidance there may be consequences including non-renewal or termination of contract’. But the BBC seems determined to avoid what they would see as a ‘running commentary’ on who has and hasn’t broken the rules and what consequences have followed. We still don’t have the BBC Executive’s judgement on the Lineker posts that their next Chair is so clear about. 

I have long thought the direction of travel is towards freedom of expression within the law for presenters other than those in news and current affairs.That solution may be the only way to conclude the psychodrama.

Are the next BBC Chair and the King on opposite sides in a culture war ?

“I’ve never been involved in any political activity at all. I’ve not been a campaigner” Samir Shah told Damian Green MP who took him through a checklist of any potential conflicts of interest.  Samir may not be a ‘campaigner’ but it is fair to call him a ’culture warrior’. He actively supports an organisation which says it is on ‘the most active front in a new culture war’.  The History Matters project was launched by leading centre-right think tank Policy Exchange in 2021 to ‘document the re-writing of history as it happens’ including the removal of certain statues on public display and the renaming of buildings and places. It claims such ‘action is being taken widely and quickly in a way that does not reflect public opinion or growing concern over our treatment of the past’. Samir Shah has been the Vice-Chair and is still a panel member of the project and he has  criticised institutions which are “far too readily acquiescing to noisy activism”. History Matters regularly lists examples of ‘what is happening’ without offering any judgement on them. The October 2023 ‘project compendium’ includes such undeniably woke events as an autumn festival at Kew Gardens ‘to celebrate Queer Nature’ but I was surprised to see Item 14 .’King Charles supports research into the Royal Family’s slavery links. The Palace have given researchers full access to the Royal Archives and the Royal Collection to investigate the family’s historic ties to slavery….The Palace has said that King Charles takes the issue ‘profoundly seriously’. Surely the Chair-Elect of the BBC doesn’t have a problem with that.

Growing demands for action on election misinformation

A leading expert on broadcasting regulation has warned that Ofcom may not have the right skillset to cope with the flow of fake news during the next General Election. Former Ofcom Director of Standards Chris Banatvala told a Voice of the Listener and Viewer conference that such was the innovation in technology that there could be fakery which is “so sophisticated that anyone can get fooled, including the regulator itself”. His warning follows a call by the Government’s chief scientific adviser, Professor Dame Angela McLean ,for a public information campaign before the next election which would warn voters how they could be tricked by AI-powered misinformation.

Chris Banatvala was on a panel on fake news which I chaired which also included Marianna Spring, Disinformation and Social Media Correspondent at the BBC and Chris Morris, CEO of FullFact.The video is recommended for anybody interested in AI and fake news.