Tweet, now deleted, was in response to Rachel Shabi’s comments on Holocaust education
The Board of Deputies of British Jews has apologised to the journalist Rachel Shabi after a message on its official Twitter account described her as an “asshole”.
The tweet from the organisation’s account on Saturday was in response to Shabi’s comments on Holocaust education.
Continue reading...Corporation’s sports coverage severely disrupted as presenters and pundits pull out in solidarity with Lineker
Match of the Day viewing figures were unaffected by the absence of Gary Lineker on Saturday night.
The shortened 20-minute version of the show had no commentary, presenters, or pundits after staff walked out in solidarity with its host Gary Lineker. Even the show’s theme music was dropped, as the BBC dealt with the fallout after suspending its highest-paid star.
Continue reading...From Alan Sugar and Karren Brady to Richard Osman and Nadiya Hussain, there is nothing new about TV presenters writing about politics
Gary Lineker’s suspension for expressing political views set off an avalanche of comparisons with other BBC stars who have not been similarly sanctioned for lacking impartiality.
Some were obvious: Lord Sugar of The Apprentice, whose 18 years of firing people have been punctuated by political outbursts, from newspaper interviews calling on people to vote Conservative to tweeting a mocked-up image of Jeremy Corbyn sitting next to Adolf Hitler.
Continue reading...Ex-director general says decision to suspend presenter for criticising government’s asylum policies is mistaken
The BBC has undermined its own credibility with its decision to stand Gary Lineker down from hosting Match of the Day because it will be viewed as having bowed to government pressure, its former director general Greg Dyke has said.
Dyke’s comments come after the corporation suspended Lineker on Friday for breaching impartiality guidelines by criticising the government’s asylum policies.
Continue reading...Decision taken after corporation takes its highest-paid presenter off air and his fellow broadcasters refuse to appear in solidarity
Match of the Day will be broadcast without any presenters or pundits this weekend, after the main host, Gary Lineker, was suspended from the BBC for breaching impartiality guidelines over his criticism of the government’s asylum policies.
In a dramatic and unexpected escalation of a crisis that has been brewing all week, the corporation took the decision to take its highest-paid presenter off its flagship football show after he was criticised by Tory MPs and the rightwing media.
Continue reading...Former culture secretary called into question neutrality of civil servant after her appointment as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff
The BBC has apologised for the failure to properly scrutinise claims made by Nadine Dorries on a radio show, capping a day of controversies for the corporation.
The broadcaster said in a statement on Friday that “there should have been more challenge” when the former culture secretary and Boris Johnson loyalist made allegations about Sue Gray on Radio 4’s World at One.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Decision to make episode about natural destruction available only on iPlayer angers programme-makers
The BBC has decided not to broadcast an episode of Sir David Attenborough’s flagship new series on British wildlife because of fears its themes of the destruction of nature would risk a backlash from Tory politicians and the rightwing press, the Guardian has been told.
The decision has angered the programme-makers and some insiders at the BBC, who fear the corporation has bowed to pressure from lobbying groups with “dinosaurian ways”.
Continue reading...Corporation is risking its reputation by making an example of its highest-paid star over his tweets on asylum policy
The BBC’s decision to take Gary Lineker off air leaves its most outspoken personality with a potentially career-defining decision, as the corporation looks to risk its reputation to make a public example of one of its biggest stars.
Lineker’s politically loaded tweets about the government’s new asylum policy – followed by a pledge to stand by his comments – had left the BBC in an almost impossible position, balancing impartiality with freedom of expression by its staff.
Continue reading...Match of the Day host says he does not fear BBC suspension for comparing government language to that of 1930s Germany
Gary Lineker has said he will stand his ground after a day of attacks from ministers over tweets he posted earlier this week criticising the government’s asylum policy, and dismissed suggestions he could face suspension from his £1.35m-a-year job at the BBC.
Pressure continues to mount on Lineker, with the culture secretary, the home secretary and two former BBC directors adding to the criticism of the Match of the Day presenter’s comments on social media, in which he likened the language used to set out the government’s immigration plans to “that used by Germany in the 30s”.
Continue reading...Placing of media boss on resignation honours list despite previous rejection puts Rishi Sunak in difficult position
Boris Johnson has once again nominated Paul Dacre for a peerage as part of a pared-back resignation honours list despite the Daily Mail chief having previously been rejected by the appointments watchdog, the Guardian has learned.
Sources with knowledge of the list have said that Johnson has put forward Dacre’s name for a second time. He had been knocked back last autumn after reported doubts raised by the House of Lords appointments commission.
Continue reading...Hiring costs for presenters such as Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg balloon while advertisers stay wary of right-leaning channel
GB News made a loss of more than £30m in its first year on air, as the right-leaning news channel invested in hiring presenters to combat the launch of rival TalkTV.
The controversy-prone channel which launched in June 2021 racked up a pre-tax loss of £30.7m in the year to the end of May 2022, a period in which it hired former Ukip leader Nigel Farage to host a nightly primetime show.
Continue reading...Move comes as White House backs bill that could give it power to ban Chinese-owned app nationwide
TikTok has announced a data security regime for protecting user information across Europe, as political pressure increases in the US to ban the social video app.
The plan, known as Project Clover, involves user data being stored on servers in Ireland and Norway at an annual cost of €1.2bn (£1.1bn), while any data transfers outside Europe will be vetted by a third-party IT company.
Continue reading...Condemnation of ‘so-called new network’ comes after Tucker Carlson shares footage from attack courtesy of Kevin McCarthy
The family of Brian Sicknick, the US Capitol police officer who died the day after the January 6 attack on Congress, condemned Tucker Carlson and Fox News as “unscrupulous and outright sleazy”, after the primetime host made his first use of security footage from the riot bestowed by Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker.
A statement on Tuesday said: “The Sicknick family is outraged at the ongoing attack on our family by the unscrupulous and outright sleazy so-called news network of Fox News.”
Continue reading...Press members living under the Taliban, and living uncertain lives in Pakistan, must be given clarity say campaign groups
Hundreds of Afghan journalists remain stranded in increasingly “dire” circumstances as frustration mounts over the UK government’s refusal to share the latest entry criteria for its flagship resettlement programme.
This weekend, a coalition of press freedom and free expression organisations, including Index on Censorship, the National Union of Journalists, PEN International and English PEN, have written to home secretary Suella Braverman asking why details of the next phase of the Afghan citizens’ resettlement scheme (ACRS) have yet to be revealed.
Continue reading...Airline claim that it was protecting the world’s future is latest ad to fall foul of ASA rules
An ad campaign by Lufthansa claiming that its green initiatives were protecting the world has been banned by the UK advertising watchdog, which ruled it was misleading consumers over the environmental impact of flying.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) launched an investigation into the campaign – which featured a plane with an image of the Earth on its underside and the strapline: “Connecting the world. Protecting its future” – over concerns the German airline was giving consumers a “misleading impression of its environmental impact”.
Continue reading...One-off dispensation for weekend celebrations will allow venues to screen events without a TV licence
The BBC is to suspend the licence fee as part of a one-off dispensation for the king’s coronation weekend.
The move will allow venues to screen the live coronation ceremony coverage on 6 May and the coronation concert on 7 May without needing to buy a TV licence.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak lauded for making ‘adult relationship’ possible between UK and EU after post-Brexit dispute
Continental media have welcomed the deal settling the EU’s bitter post-Brexit dispute with the UK over Northern Ireland, hoping it may herald a new “adult relationship” that had been unthinkable while the “untrustworthy” Boris Johnson was in Downing Street.
In France, where the president, Emmanuel Macron, hailed “an important decision” that would “preserve the Good Friday agreement and protect our European internal market”, Le Monde called the Windsor framework a significant breakthrough.
Continue reading...Network owner also admitted in $1.6bn defamation lawsuit deposition that Trump’s claims were ‘damaging to everybody’
Newly released court documents reveal that Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire owner of Fox News, acknowledged under oath that several Fox News hosts endorsed Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
The mogul made the admission during a deposition in the $1.6bn defamation lawsuit brought against the network by the voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems, which has accused Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, of maligning its reputation. In his deposition, Murdoch said that the hosts Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro “endorsed” the false narrative promoted by Trump.
Continue reading...Take It Down allows anyone to anonymously generate a digital fingerprint of the image they want deleted, without uploading it
“Once you send that photo, you can’t take it back,” goes the warning to teenagers, often ignoring the reality that many teens send explicit images of themselves under duress, or without understanding the consequences.
A new online tool aims to give some control back to teens, or people who were once teens, and take down explicit images and videos of themselves from the internet.
Continue reading...Once-popular cartoon scrapped from hundreds of papers after Scott Adams calls Black people a ‘hate group’ on his YouTube show
The comic strip Dilbert has been dropped from multiple US newspapers in response to racist comments by its creator, Scott Adams, who called Black Americans a “hate group” and urged white people to “get the hell away” from Black people in a YouTube video.
Adams’s comments on 22 February came in response to a conservative organization’s poll which appeared to show that 26% of Black respondents said they disagreed with the statement “It’s OK to be white”. Another 21% said they were not sure.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting
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