Gary Lineker broke BBC impartiality rules with tweet about Liz Truss and Conservative Party, corporation finds

Gary Lineker’s tweet was discovered to interrupt impartiality guidelines (Image: Samir Hussein/WireImage)

The BBC has confirmed that Gary Lineker broke its impartiality guidelines with a tweet about Liz Truss and the Conservative Celebration.

The Match Of The Day host, 61, had shared a tweet together with his followers in February after the then-Overseas Secretary Liz Truss urging individuals to boycott the Champions League ultimate in Russia.

He had requested his followers on the time: ‘And her get together will hand again their donations from Russian donors?’

Lineker’s tweet as Russia started its invasion of Ukraine, previous to Uefa introduced that it was shifting the Champions League ultimate away from Saint Petersburg to Paris in consequence.

His tweet was investigated by the BBC’s Government Complaints Unit (ECU) which upheld a criticism and mentioned the publish ‘didn't meet the BBC’s editorial requirements on impartiality’.

It added that whereas Lineker is just not required to uphold the identical excessive requirements of impartiality because the broadcaster’s journalists, he does have an ‘extra accountability’ as he's thought-about ‘one of many BBC’s highest profile stars’.

The presenter is among the BBC’s most high-profile stars (Image: PA Photographs Contributor/Press Affiliation Photographs)

The ruling added: ‘We anticipate these people to keep away from taking sides on get together political points or political controversies and to take care when addressing public coverage issues.’

Lineker, who remained the BBC’s highest-earning presenter for 2022 and the one title to earn over £1million yearly, declined to touch upon the ruling.

The sportsman was paid between £1,350,000 and £1,354,999 in 2021/2022 for work together with Match Of The Day and Sports activities Persona Of The Yr – a discount of £10,000 on the earlier 12 months.

Lineker first topped the checklist for 2017/18 with a pay bracket of £1,750,000 to £1,759,999, and in 2020 it was introduced he had taken a voluntary pay minimize.

The previous England striker had identified that his tweet was in response to an article about soccer, his space of experience, and the board accepted it had been supposed it as a touch upon sport reasonably than politics.

Whereas BBC Sport managers highlighted that Lineker’s tweet was posed as a query reasonably than an announcement, the ECU concluded that the publish was supposed to focus on a ‘perceived inconsistency within the Conservative Celebration’s method, at a time when relations between the UK and Russia had been the topic of serious public debate’.