BBC boss says ‘follow the rules' after latest Lineker row
Lineker came under criticism on Tuesday after he shared, then deleted, a post on his Instagram account from the group, Palestine Lobby, illustrated with a picture of a rat, titled: 'Zionism explained in two minutes.'
Rats, linked to disease and dirt, has been used to represent Jews in antisemitic propaganda throughout history, including by the Nazis in 1930s Germany.
Lineker's agent told the BBC the presenter immediately deleted the post when he learned about the image's symbolism, which he had previously not appreciated.
Mr Davie, after giving a wide-ranging speech, speaking of trust, disinformation and impartiality, was asked if Lineker had broken the BBC's rules.
Mr Davie, speaking at The Lowry arts centre in Salford, said: 'The BBC's reputation is held by everyone and when someone makes a mistake, it costs us.
'And I think we absolutely need people to be the exemplars of BBC values and follow our social media policies, simple as that.'
Charity, the Campaign Against Antisemitism has called for Lineker to be sacked.
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: 'Gary Lineker really has the worst luck when it comes to campaigning for his causes without aligning himself with extremists and antisemites.
BBC director general Tim Davie addressed trust, disinformation and impartiality in a wide-ranging speech (Andrew Milligan PA)
'Not only does this video deliberately misrepresent Zionism — the belief that Jews have the same right to self-determination as everyone else — but it adds a rat emoji in doing so.
'Perhaps Mr Lineker is not as naive or accident prone as he might like us to believe.
'As the BBC's highest-paid presenter and owner of a major media enterprise, maybe he knows exactly what he's doing.
'We will be submitting a complaint to the BBC over this latest post. Having looked the other way until now, at this point, it is clear that Mr Lineker's continued association with the BBC is untenable. He must go.'
Lineker was temporarily suspended from the BBC in March 2023 after an impartiality row over comments he made criticising the then-government's new asylum policy.
And he was among 500 other high-profile figures who signed an open letter in February urging the BBC, to re-broadcast a documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, to BBC iPlayer.
The documentary was pulled from the BBC'S streaming service in February after it emerged its 13-year-old narrator was the son of a Hamas official.
The corporation has apologised and admitted 'serious flaws' in the making of the film and the matter is still subject to an internal investigation.
Last November Lineker announced he would be stepping down from presenting Match Of The Day, but will still host World Cup and FA Cup coverage.
Lineker is the co-founder of Goalhanger Podcasts, makers of the popular The Rest is History series and its spin-offs about Politics, Football, Entertainment and Money.
Lineker's agent has been contacted by PA Media for comment.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
Professor sues University of California for suspension over comments about Israel's war in Gaza
A professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, says the university violated her freedom of speech rights by suspending her for her online comments about Israel's war in Gaza in a new lawsuit. The suit was filed by Rupa Marya, an internal medicine physician and professor at UCSF, identified as an expert in decolonial theory. Marya was placed on leave in September 2024 and had her clinical privileges briefly suspended by the UCSF executive medical board following comments she made on X that questioned the impacts of Zionism as 'a supremacist, racist ideology' on healthcare. Without naming Marya directly, the university subsequently published a statement across its social media accounts that said such comments were a 'tired and racist conspiracy theory' that 'Zionist doctors were a threat to Arab, Palestinian, South Asian, Muslin and Black patients, as well as the US healthcare system' and should be condemned. Mark Kleiman, an attorney for Marya, said in the court filing that his client was fired last month 'despite requesting a hearing, which she was entitled to', according to NBC News. 'Firing Dr Marya doesn't only violate her right to free speech, it threatens all of us,' he said in a statement to the network. 'We all need to urgently speak up against these kinds of attacks on our basic rights to advocate for justice, and we expect the court will agree with us that Dr Marya's rights have been violated and must be remedied.' According to court documents, Marya's posts 'never impeded the performance of her duties as a physician or faculty member, or the regular operation of the university'. 'As a medical doctor, American citizen and as a person of south Asian descent raised in the Sikh religious tradition, Dr Marya has long been concerned about American foreign policy, including in the Middle East and the issues surrounding the conflict between Israel and Palestine,' the complaint reads. 'Her posts take aim at state policy and supremacist political ideologies, not at any religious or ethnic group.' According to the lawsuit, Marya received 'rape and death threats' as well as 'repeated harassment and threats' because of her posts. She says her posts also expressed 'solidarity with the hospitals and healthcare workers that Israel was attacking in Gaza' and that she 'felt an obligation to speak out and did so using her X account'. In a September 2024 post, Marya wrote on social media that UCSF students were concerned that a first-year student from Israel may have served in the IDF; she asked 'if he participated in the genocide of Palestinians' and asked her colleagues what to do about it. The post drew the attention of state senator Scott Wiener, who posted on X that 'the same UCSF professor who promoted the 'doctors' plot' – an age old antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish doctors are harming patients – is now targeting a 1st year med student for harassment b/c he's Israeli. This professor is creating a toxic, hostile environment at UCSF.' UCSF's chancellor, Sam Hawgood, said he took 'immediate action to address this situation,' adding that 'targeting any member of our UCSF community – especially in a way that fosters hostility or discrimination – will not be tolerated', according to a letter obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle. In a March interview with the Guardian, Marya asked: 'How do we integrate [Israeli] reservists into the medical community – with [Palestinian] students who have lost 50 or 60 family members? What is the moral obligation of medicine?' The lawsuit comes as there is ongoing and widespread disagreement across the US about academic freedom on college campuses. Last week, the Trump administration stepped up its efforts to force US universities to crack down on what it deems antisemitic activity. The Department of Education warned New York's Columbia University it could lose accreditation, and thus access to federal grants, over an alleged violation of federal anti-discrimination laws. The Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services said last month that it had found that Columbia had acted with 'deliberate indifference' toward the harassment of Jewish students during campus protests. Israel's war in Gaza is estimated to have killed more than 54,000 Palestinians and levelled much of the territory. Last week, the Guardian reported that on Sunday at least 31 Palestinians were killed after Israeli forces opened fire near a food distribution center in Rafah, Gaza. A separate incident at the same site on Monday killed three. International criticism intensified last week over a new aid distribution system in Gaza, run by the Israeli- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), and not UN or international aid organisations. The UN's human rights chief, Volker Türk, said that Palestinians in Gaza face an impossible choice: 'Die from starvation or risk being killed while trying to access the meagre food that is being made available.' The attacks on civilians, he added, constituted a war crime. The Guardian has contacted UCSF and Marya's legal team for comment.
Powys County Times
4 hours ago
- Powys County Times
Home Office plans to spend £2.2bn of foreign aid on asylum support this year
The Home Office plans to spend about £2.2 billion of foreign aid to support asylum seekers this financial year, according to new figures. The amount of overseas development assistance (ODA) budgeted by the Home Office – which is largely used to cover accommodation costs such as hotels for asylum seekers – is slightly less than the £2.3 billion it spent in 2024/25. International rules allow countries to count first-year costs of supporting refugees as overseas development assistance (ODA). The figures, first reported by the BBC, were published in recent days on the Home Office website. The Home Office said it is 'urgently taking action to restore order and reduce costs' which will cut the amount spent to support asylum seekers and refugees in the UK. It also said it was expected to have saved £500 million in asylum support costs in the last financial year, and that this had saved £200 million in ODA which had been passed back to the Treasury. A total of 32,345 asylum seekers were being housed temporarily in UK hotels at the end of March this year. This figure is down 15% from the end of December, when the total was 38,079, and 6% lower than the 34,530 at the same point a year earlier. Asylum seekers and their families are housed in temporary accommodation if they are waiting for the outcome of a claim or an appeal and have been assessed as not being able to support themselves independently. They are housed in hotels if there is not enough space in accommodation provided by local authorities or other organisations. Labour has previously said it is 'committed to end the use of asylum hotels over time', adding that under the previous Conservative government at one stage 'more than 400 hotels were in use and almost £9 million per day was being spent'. Jo White, chairwoman of the Red Wall group of Labour MPs, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Saturday: 'We need to be looking at things like ECHR article eight. I don't think anything's off the table … including looking at new options such as processing abroad. 'So, we have to be open to see how we can move move that backlog as quickly as possible. I'm getting impatient. 'I know my colleagues in parliament are getting impatient and we're pressing the Government as hard as we can on this.' A Home Office spokesperson said: 'We inherited an asylum system under exceptional pressure and are urgently taking action to restore order and reduce costs. 'This will ultimately reduce the amount of official development assistance spent to support asylum seekers and refugees in the UK. 'We are immediately speeding up decisions and increasing returns so that we can end the use of hotels and save the taxpayer £4 billion by 2026. 'The Rwanda scheme also wasted £700 million to remove just four volunteers – instead, we have surged removals to nearly 30,000 since the election, are giving law enforcement new counter-terror style powers, and increasing intelligence sharing through our Border Security Command to tackle the heart of the issue, vile people-smuggling gangs.'
The Independent
5 hours ago
- The Independent
Home Office plans to spend £2.2bn of foreign aid on asylum support this year
The Home Office plans to spend about £2.2 billion of foreign aid to support asylum seekers this financial year, according to new figures. The amount of overseas development assistance (ODA) budgeted by the Home Office – which is largely used to cover accommodation costs such as hotels for asylum seekers – is slightly less than the £2.3 billion it spent in 2024/25. International rules allow countries to count first-year costs of supporting refugees as overseas development assistance (ODA). The figures, first reported by the BBC, were published in recent days on the Home Office website. The Home Office said it is 'urgently taking action to restore order and reduce costs' which will cut the amount spent to support asylum seekers and refugees in the UK. It also said it was expected to have saved £500 million in asylum support costs in the last financial year, and that this had saved £200 million in ODA which had been passed back to the Treasury. A total of 32,345 asylum seekers were being housed temporarily in UK hotels at the end of March this year. This figure is down 15% from the end of December, when the total was 38,079, and 6% lower than the 34,530 at the same point a year earlier. Asylum seekers and their families are housed in temporary accommodation if they are waiting for the outcome of a claim or an appeal and have been assessed as not being able to support themselves independently. They are housed in hotels if there is not enough space in accommodation provided by local authorities or other organisations. Labour has previously said it is 'committed to end the use of asylum hotels over time', adding that under the previous Conservative government at one stage 'more than 400 hotels were in use and almost £9 million per day was being spent'. Jo White, chairwoman of the Red Wall group of Labour MPs, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Saturday: 'We need to be looking at things like ECHR article eight. I don't think anything's off the table … including looking at new options such as processing abroad. 'So, we have to be open to see how we can move move that backlog as quickly as possible. I'm getting impatient. 'I know my colleagues in parliament are getting impatient and we're pressing the Government as hard as we can on this.' A Home Office spokesperson said: 'We inherited an asylum system under exceptional pressure and are urgently taking action to restore order and reduce costs. 'This will ultimately reduce the amount of official development assistance spent to support asylum seekers and refugees in the UK. 'We are immediately speeding up decisions and increasing returns so that we can end the use of hotels and save the taxpayer £4 billion by 2026. 'The Rwanda scheme also wasted £700 million to remove just four volunteers – instead, we have surged removals to nearly 30,000 since the election, are giving law enforcement new counter-terror style powers, and increasing intelligence sharing through our Border Security Command to tackle the heart of the issue, vile people-smuggling gangs.'
