Documents Reveal BBC Boss Tim Davie Was In Contact With Top Government Official On Day He Suspended Gary Lineker
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: BBC Director General Tim Davie was in contact with a senior government official on the day he suspended Gary Lineker, raising questions about whether he was pressured to punish the presenter for breaking impartiality rules.
Documents obtained by Deadline reveal that Davie was in dialogue with Polly Payne, Director General of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), on March 10.
Emails between the BBC and the DCMS show that Payne and Davie’s conversations were unscheduled. The papers cast fresh light on the biggest crisis of Davie’s tenure after he suspended Match of the Day host Lineker for tweeting that government asylum policy had echoes of Nazi Germany.
Lineker was swiftly reinstated three days later following a weekend of chaos, in which his colleagues effectively went on strike and BBC sports coverage fell off air.
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