Influence: Richard Sharp (left) and Boris Johnson.
Here’s an aspect to Richard Sharp’s resignation as BBC Chairman that needs to be more thoroughly examined: his relationship with Boris Johnson and what that former prime minister wanted from the media.
This aspect was explored by James O’Brien on LBC:
The assumption is that Boris Johnson wasn’t happy that the right-wing of politics controls 90 per cent of the media and wanted to put his people in charge of organisations including Ofcom and the BBC, to ensure even more right-wing media dominance.
It suggests that Johnson failed with Ofcom but succeeded with the BBC.
Now take a look at the way the BBC’s Ros Atkins examines the Sharp case:
Again, Johnson is mentioned – but his intention in appointing Sharp is glossed-over. The report comes across as fence-sitting.
Is this an aspect of Sharp’s Tory influence?
If that is even possible, is it right that Sharp remains in post until June, while a new BBC chairperson is interviewed, vetted and appointed?
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We all knew this was going to happen; it was just a matter of time.
Richard Sharp has resigned as BBC Chairman after an investigation found he did not mention “potential perceived” conflicts of interest before his appointment to the role.
These include telling then-prime minister Boris Johnson that he wanted to apply for the role before doing so, and arranging a meeting between Cabinet Secretary Simon Case and Simon Blyth, a distant cousin of Johnson’s who wanted to provide financial support to the then-prime minister (the sum of £800,000 has been mentioned in the past). It seems that meeting did not take place.
The investigation did not pass judgement on whether Sharp had any intention to influence the former PM. This would be impossible to gauge unless Sharp actually admitted it.
The report by barrister Adam Heppinstall found “there is a risk of a perception that Mr Sharp was recommended for appointment” because he sought to assist the PM in a private financial matter “and/or that he influenced the former prime minister to recommend him by informing him of his application before he submitted it”.
It is likely that the conclusion is phrased in this way because it is impossible to say for certain whether either act influenced Johnson without Johnson admitting it, and that was never likely to happen.
The report notes that Sharp did not accept the first finding but has apologised for the second. He has called the breach of public appointment rules “inadvertent and not material”.
The problem is, he did not mention either matter to the appointments panel during the scrutiny process that took place before he took up the role as BBC Chairman, so its members did not have an opportunity to consider for themselves whether these matters were inadvertent and immaterial.
And he should have mentioned them, because it is specifically demanded in the Cabinet Office’s Governance Code: “If you have any interests that might be relevant to the work of the BBC, and which could lead to a real or perceived conflict of interest if you were to be appointed, please provide details in your application.”
Instead, the potential conflicts of interest were revealed by The Sunday Times in January, triggering a wave of speculation and condemnation.
No other applicant was able to indicate an interest in the job to Boris Johnson in advance, remember. And it seems a pre-briefing in October 2020 sought to influence other potential candidates not to apply for the role because Johnson had Sharp in mind for it.
Sharp’s claim that he knew nothing of Boris Johnson’s financial affairs when arranging the meeting between Mr Case and Mr Blyth rings false; how would he have known Johnson might want a loan otherwise?
And it seems unrealistic that a man with years of experience in the business world would not realise there would be a perceived conflict of interest because of his having been involved in facilitating a possible loan to the then-prime minister.
Sharp was questioned strongly about the matter by the Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee – one of whose members, SNP MP John Nicolson, said afterwards: “It leaves the impression so much of this is deeply ‘Establishment’; it’s pals appointing pals, donating money to pals.
“It rather leaves the impression that it is all a bit… ‘banana republic’ and cosy.”
The committee’s conclusion was that Sharp’s conduct showed serious errors of judgement.
In that case, it is right that he should go. He might commit similar errors as BBC boss.
The question is: what happens next?
The Sharp affair has raised serious questions about cronyism in public appointments.
Until the public can be reassured that no such ‘Establishment’ or ‘banana republic’ behaviour is taking place, it seems unlikely that we will ever trust the terms on which any other such public appointment takes place.
Who’s going to be the next BBC chair – Owen Paterson?
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Jeremy Corbyn: mass media like the BBC and ITV present you with a distorted impression of him – like a blurred mirror (left), rather than an accurate account of the man and his politics.
Take a look at these two tweets and the video clips they highlight – and attack:
On #GMB Ed Balls implies that Keir Starmer has prevented Jeremy Corbyn from being a Labour candidate because of antisemitism.
Except the motion Starmer put forward to prevent his predecessor from being a candidate didn't mention antisemitism once. pic.twitter.com/TfJixJUgjV
BBC sink ever further into the gutter. The UK is lied to daily by this sinister and dangerous organisation. Until people begin to understand this about BBC, there will be no democracy in this country.#ItWasAScamhttps://t.co/j9fVZKtpZT
Yes, the BBC allows lies to go unchallenged once again – after having apologised for them only a matter of weeks previously.
Why? Well…
Albert Einstein warned in 1949 that the time would come when the very rich so controlled the means of communication that it would be almost impossible for ordinary people to make informed decisions and so democracy would then be broken
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How the BBC treats Jeremy Corbyn: remember the Newsnight backdrop making him look like a Soviet-style Communist?
Why is the BBC only ‘correcting’ its lie about Jeremy Corbyn on Newsnight? What about all the other occasions the same falsehood has been repeated on its programmes?
The corporation has issued a statement on its “corrections and clarifications” web page, as illustrated in the tweet below that juxtaposes the offence with the explanation:
The BBC issue a statement on their 'corrections and clarifications' page making it clear that when Newsnight claimed Jeremy Corbyn had never apologised for antisemitism, that was a lie.pic.twitter.com/GfCjO3Wt2h
“In an item about Labour’s National Executive Committee voting to stop former leader Jeremy Corbyn running as a candidate in the next general election, we referenced the row over antisemitism in the party and Mr Corbyn’s “refusal to offer up any kind of apology for that”. We also questioned whether he would refuse to apologise “as he has all the way up to now” if antisemitism came up in an election campaign.
“To be clear, Mr Corbyn apologised for antisemitism in Labour on a number of occasions as Party Leader, including ahead of a meeting with Jewish community leaders in April 2018. In 2020, after the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) investigated antisemitism in the party and found unlawful harassment and discrimination, Labour suspended Mr Corbyn after he said he did not accept all the EHRC findings and said the scale of antisemitism had been ‘dramatically overstated’.”
But isn’t even the correction misleading?
The BBC apologises for lying then misleads again: "He said he did not accept all the EHRC findings." Corbyn: "While I do not accept all of its findings, I trust its recommendations will be swiftly implemented." Leaving out the "while" and all from the comma changes the meaning. https://t.co/TvPIU5ddZspic.twitter.com/msfMVKUiS9
But what about the falsehoods in other BBC programmes, such as Politics Live?
Consider the utterances of Rafael Behr and Jenny Chapman on February 20 this year, here:
Or those of Siobahn McDonagh and Sebastian Payne on March 27 this year, here:
The BBC may well try to duck out of responsibility by saying these were the words of guests on its programmes – but of course those words were not corrected by any BBC representative, despite the corporation’s duty to report the facts.
Jenny Chapman referred to “integrity and credibility”. By failing to correct all instances in which falsehoods about Mr Corbyn were uttered on its programmes, the BBC trashes its own reputation for either.
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Conservative minister for defence people, veterans and service families Dr Andrew Murrison tried to put forward the Tory line on crime to a BBC Question Time audience in Bristol – and failed miserably.
He wanted them – and the rest of us – to believe that crime has fallen by half since the Tories slithered into office in 2010. But to do that, he had to ignore fraud.
Vox Political has already pointed out that, in fact, crime has increased by 50 per cent over the relevant period – watch as host Fiona Bruce quotes the same figures back to Dr Murrison.
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This BBC Question Time audience member didn’t mince her words on the Conservative government approach to anti-social behaviour – she turned the Tories into mincemeat instead.
Watch as she describes how it is the Conservatives’ own choices that have increased the risk of crime while failing to do anything to counter it.
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After days in which Labour politicians have lambasted BBC Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker for publishing entirely reasonable comments about the Tory Illegal Migration Bill on Twitter, party leader Keir Starmer has changed course radically.
Mr Lineker said the rhetoric used by Home Secretary Suella Braverman was similar to that of Germany in the 1930s.
He has since been shown to be right.
There is no stipulation in his BBC contract to suggest that he, as a sports presenter, should not be allowed to discuss politics on his own personal Twitter feed.
But Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper had this to say about it when she was interviewed on LBC, after the row initially broke out…
Contrast her words with Keir Starmer’s comment, after the BBC suspended Mr Lineker from presenting Match of the Day, prompting a huge walkout by his fellow sports presenters that critically hampered the Corporation’s sports coverage and brought its decision-making into question.
This was just bandwagon-jumping by Starmer.
He saw an opportunity to hammer the BBC for pandering to Conservatives and he took it – never mind the fact that he was speaking in opposition to his own shadow ministers.
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Here’s another great analysis of what’s coming to be known as GaryGate, or LinekerGate:
The big take-out from this one is the passage from Gary Lineker’s BBC contract – on personal opinions.
It states, “The Conflicts of Interest Guidelines on Public Expressions of Opinion set out the position for all BBC staff:
“Public expressions of opinion have the potential to compromise the BBC’s impartiality and to damage its reputation. This includes the use of social media and writing letters to the press. Opinions expressed on social media are put into the public domain, can be shared and are searchable.
“The risk is greater where the public expressions of opinion overlap with the area of the individual’s work. The risk is lower where an individual is expressing views publicly on an unrelated area, for example, a sports or science presenter expressing views on politics or the arts.”
So Gary Lineker was well within his rights to express an opinion on politics, from his position as a sports presenter, it seems.
The revelation of these guidelines also highlights a glaring double-standard at the BBC, where hard right-winger Andrew Neil – for many years the Corporation’s most high-profile political presenter – was allowed to tweet his highly-partisan opinions willy-nilly for years without ever being called into question under these guidelines.
It seems the BBC cannot be trusted to apply its own guidelines.
Perhaps an independent body should be assigned to oversee it?
Ah, but that would require bureaucracy and red tape – and Tories are against that.
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“Blatantly Backing Conservatives”: the malady seems to have spread from BBC news and is now affecting all its departments. But can the Corporation bow to public demand and restore its tattered claim to impartiality?
Who would have thought that one little tweet would rock the world’s biggest public service broadcaster to its foundations?
That’s what Gary Lineker seems to have done with this message:
He was referring, of course, to the language used by Suella Braverman when she introduced her silly Illegal Migration Bill to Parliament last week – and he was right.
Subsequently, we learned that the measures in the Bill, and the language around it, would be more appropriately compared to the UK’s own treatment of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s – politicians of that time sent more than half a million back to Europe where an unknown number ended up being killed in extermination camps as part of the Holocaust.
Everybody should think very hard about that – and about the way politicians in both the Conservative Party and Labour condemned Mr Lineker and denied that the current Bill, or the way it was described, bore any resemblance to what happened in the 1930s.
The BBC reacted to Tory pressure the way it usually does – it caved in.
Mr Lineker was removed from his position as host of Match of the Day – and the Corporation lied about the circumstances. First we were told he was “stepping back” voluntarily until he could reach an agreement with the BBC over how he conducts himself on a social media account that is nothing to do with his employment and over which his employers should have no influence at all. Then we found out that he had been forced out.
And then the effluent hit the air conditioner.
Mr Lineker’s co-presenters on MOTD walked out in solidarity with him and everyone asked to be a possible stand-in host refused on principle.
Now, we are learning that sports coverage at the Beeb is suffering even more:
Presenters, pundits, commentators, players and another BBC football shows pulled….am sure no-one at BBC had any idea the decision to take Lineker off air would escalate as quickly or dramatically like this. And when crises do blow up like this, climb-downs become even harder…. https://t.co/BfyD9wHkwG
And the backlash has spread into other parts of the BBC.
Question Time, which actually discussed both the Illegal Migration Bill and Mr Lineker’s tweet about it, has come under fire after host Fiona Bruce played down the significance of Stanley Johnson beating his wife, in a discussion of his son Boris’s nomination of that man for a knighthood.
Here’s what she said (with apologies for the strong language used by the person tweeting it):
The charity Refuge, which supports women and children who are victims of domestic abuse – and for whom Ms Bruce is an ambassador, made its position abundantly clear:
“Domestic abuse is never a ‘one off’, it is a pattern of behaviour that can manifest in a number of ways, including physical abuse. Domestic abuse is never acceptable.”
In a parallel with the BBC’s treatment of Mr Lineker, the charity said it had also been in talks with Ms Bruce: “She is appalled that any of her words have been understood as her minimising domestic violence. We know she is deeply upset that this has been triggering for survivors.
“Like the host of any BBC programme, when serious on-air allegations are made about someone, Fiona is obliged to put forward a right of reply from that person or their representatives, and that was what happened last night. These are not in any way Fiona’s own views about the situation.
“Fiona is deeply sorry that last night’s programme has distressed survivors of domestic abuse. Refuge stands by her and all survivors today.”
Sadly, the BBC did not see fit to support the charity’s assertion that Ms Bruce was “appalled” and “deeply sorry” for “triggering” and having “distressed” survivors.
Instead, it merely defended what happened on the programme: “When serious allegations are made on air against people or organisations, it is the job of BBC presenters to ensure that the context of those allegations – and any right of reply from the person or organisation – is given to the audience, and this is what Fiona Bruce was doing last night. She was not expressing any personal opinion about the situation.”
Not good enough.
A BBC decision not to broadcast an episode of Sir David Attenborough’s new series Wild Isles for fear that its its themes of the destruction of nature would risk a backlash from Tory politicians and the right wing press has provoked a huge backlash – not just from environmental groups but, again, from within the Corporation itself.
The sixth episode will appear only on BBC iPlayer. All six episodes were narrated by Attenborough, and made by the production company Silverback Films, which was responsible for previous series including Our Planet.
Chris Packham, presenter of Springwatch, told The Guardian: “At this time, in our fight to save the world’s biodiversity, it is irresponsible not to put that at the forefront of wildlife broadcasting.”
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said: “For the BBC to censor of one of the nation’s most informed and trusted voices on the nature and climate emergencies is nothing short of an unforgivable dereliction of its duty to public service broadcasting. This government has taken a wrecking ball to our environment – putting over 1,700 pieces of environmental legislation at risk, setting an air pollution target which is a decade too late, and neglecting the scandal of our sewage-filled waterways – which cannot go unexamined and unchallenged by the public.”
The Guardian added that “senior sources at the BBC [said] that the decision not to show the sixth episode was made to fend off potential critique from the political right.
Again, the BBC’s response was cowardly. The broadcaster claimed the six-part series was only ever intended to have five episodes: “Wild Isles is – and always was – a five part series and does not shy away from environmental content. We have acquired a separate film for iPlayer from the RSPB and WWF and Silverback Films about people working to preserve and restore the biodiversity of the British Isles.”
If this sixth film is part of a package of such films – a series, if you will – all made by the same organisations and narrated by the same person, and all to be available together on iPlayer, then it seems clear that it is an episode of that series and the BBC is again being economical with the truth.
This behaviour – and the decision over Mr Lineker – drew the following comment from economist Richard Murphy;
So, this afternoon the BBC gives in to fascists over Gary Lineker’s support for asylum seekers and on David Attenborough’s desire to highlight the impact of climate change. Fascism isn’t a threat. It is happening here and now, with the BBC enabling it.
Finally (for now), the BBC has faced a backlash against its continued employment of Lord Sugar on The Apprentice, whose own political tweets – particularly attacking former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – have gone unquestioned by the Corporation.
Mr Corbyn found an unlikely defender – on a BBC news programme – in Alastair Campbell. And the former New Labour press secretary didn’t pull his punches when referring to any of the scandals mentioned above:
Finally some honesty about the disgusting treatment Jeremy Corbyn received from figures at the BBC. And it’s coming from…Alistair Campbell. pic.twitter.com/sBhNOMFrIL
I’m aware that Campbell himself is a controversial figure but he’s absolutely right here.
The BBC is in serious trouble over these politically-motivated decisions. Its claim of political impartiality lies in tatters.
The only way out is to apologise and reform.
But, as Beth Rigby stated above, when crises blow up like this, climbdowns become very hard to do.
What next?
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Empty chairs: is this how Match of the Day will look tomorrow?
The BBC has dug a hole for itself after dropping Gary Lineker from its flagship football show, Match of the Day, over his tweet linking government rhetoric on Channel migrants with that of Germany in the 1930s.
Mr Lineker will not be presenting Match of the Day this week – but the reason is not clear. The BBC is saying he’s “stepping back” until an agreement is reached on how he should use the social media – but Sky News reckons he has been forced off the programme for refusing to apologise.
Now, fellow presenters are lining up to refuse to take part. So far, Alan Shearer and Ian Wright have said they will not appear, in “solidarity” with Mr Lineker.
Jermaine Jenas has said if he were asked, he would say no.
Is Saturday’s edition of the show going to be a shot of empty chairs around a desk, with some football clips interspersed intermittently?
Elsewhere in the BBC, Good Morning Britain host Richard Madeley made himself both a hero and a villain in the eyes of the public when he talked about the row surrounding Mr Lineker’s Twitter comments on the BBC’s Question Time.
First, he stood by Mr Lineker’s right to say anything he wants on his personal Twitter account – to applause from the audience.
Then he said what had actually been declared on Twitter was “preposterous” – and received a less enthusiastic reaction.
See for yourself:
What do you think? Should Gary Lineker have his right to free speech curtailed, simply because he presents a programme that is not remotely related to the subject he was discussing?
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