ONE of the BBC’s highest paid media personalities, football pundit Gary Lineker, has called out a colleague at the corporation after a public spat over impartiality on social media.
Lineker, who in July was revealed to be the BBC’s top earning on-air talent for the fifth year running, was told off by a journalist at the corporation after he tweeted about sewage being pumped into waterways in England.
Raw sewage was pumped into English rivers and coasts around 800,000 times in the period 2020-2021, according to the Environment Agency.
The BBC football pundit wrote on Twitter: “As a politician how could you ever, under any circumstances, bring yourself to vote for pumping sewage into our seas? Unfathomable!”
As a politician how could you ever, under any circumstances, bring yourself to vote for pumping sewage into our seas? Unfathomable!
— Gary Lineker 💙💛 (@GaryLineker) August 22, 2022
In the public row that followed, BBC journalist Neil Henderson suggested Lineker should “get off” the broadcaster if he was not prepared to be impartial.
After Lineker confirmed that the two likely had different contracts, giving the former footballer the “freedom to tweet about this sort of thing”, Henderson replied: “Does not our duty of impartiality apply across the BBC?”
Lineker responded: “Only in news and current affairs. Surely you know this?”
Henderson wrote back: “The BBC lives or dies by its impartiality. If you can’t abide it, get off it.”
The journalist has now deleted his contributions to the Twitter spat, while Lineker’s remain up.
In response to another user on the thread, Lineker said it had been a “very odd attack”. “I’m also freelance,” he added.
In September 2020, the BBC’s newly appointed director-general, Tim Davie, made clear that he was prepared to sack presenters who are deemed to breach impartiality rules on social media.
In social media guidance issued the following month, the BBC said employees should follow four key rules in their output.
They were told:
- Not to bring the BBC "into disrepute"
- To maintain impartiality if required: Meaning staff should not "express a personal opinion on matters of public policy, politics or 'controversial subjects'"
- Not to criticise their colleagues in public
- To respect the privacy of the workplace and the confidentiality of internal announcements
