Lineker teaches top BBC presenter how to report facts
JVL Introduction
This is a classic piece of journalism from Owen Jones, celebrating an encounter between Gary Lineker and BBC Radio4 Today presenter Amol Rajan.
As film-maker Richard Sanders, quoted by Jones, said on social media, the clip showed us Rajan, who has “one of the most powerful jobs in British media, lectured on basic journalism by a man whose job it is to talk about football.”
In his 10 minute video, Jones sets out succinctly how the BBC, alongside most legacy media, has failed to inform the public about the reality of Israel’s genocide, accepting Israeli lies while denying or ignoring Palestinian truth.
Paraphrasing Lineker, Jones remarks:
If someone says it’s raining and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. it’s your job to look out the f**king window and find out what is true.
NWI
This article was originally published by Owen Jones on Wed 23 Apr 2025. Read the original here.
Gary Lineker SHAMES BBC Over Gaza
Loading article text…
We need more people to speak out as Owen Jones is doing. Today they will be vilified but tomorrow we will remember their words and be glad they spoke up. Palestinians need people like Owen Jones.
Lineker is great. BBC is guilty of false equivalemce across so many issues. Platforming climate deniers equally is placing opionion above overwhelming scientific fact, at the risk of losing the planet. On Gaza there isn’t even equivalence given to Palestinians but erasure. That s collusion in genocide in my book. Love Linker’s his comments and he is so right sbout the BBC – while being generous.
Sally Reckert: we also need more people like Gary Lineker to speak out, who is not a journalist or a politician, but a public figure who chooses to speak honestly – ‘truth to power’ is the standard cliche here – despite all the pressures he faces not to do so. He sets an example which I hope, but don’t assume, others might follow.
The bbc, like Labour, needs to dumped.
From the first time I heard him I always thought Amol Rajan was a bit too full of himself.
Thank God for Gary Lineker – and Owen Jones. Shame on Amol Rajan for ignoring the context of the persecution of Palestinians since 948 and repeating the lie that the atrocities of 7 October in any way might justify the crime the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. That war crime is one of the bases of the international arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against Netanyahu. It is a crime against humanity that can never be said to have any justification.
Though Lineker was far too gentle in his criticism. Made far too much of how difficult it must be for the BBC.
Thank goodness for Lineker.
It would also seem that Owen Jones has seen the light – possibly. Six to seven years ago he was criticising Jeremy Corbyn during the manufactured “Labour/antisemitism” nonsense. I look forward to Jones owning up to having been wrong back then.
I suspect that I’ll have a long wait though.
Good point by Shaun Pye, and weren’t that Noravirus Media lot also on board with smearing too ? I seem to remember them at least entertaining it.
Jones was pretty much cheerleading the overthrow of Gaddafi, and am pretty sure there was a whole contingent of the ‘Stop the War Coalition’, a group who haven’t actually done what they say, who protested outside the Libyan embassy in London against Gaddafi. Some of these Western leftists, will on the one hand go on about the need for socialism, but on the other keen to see actually existing socialist or more progressive regimes overthrown. Some of them even seem to think that rebels in Libya and Syria represented a genuine workers uprising, not the reality, which is that their Western backed mercenaries.