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NLJ this week: Politics, football & the BBC

07 April 2023
Issue: 8020 / Categories: Legal News , Media , Procedure & practice , Immigration & asylum
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Talk about an own goal—the BBC’s grounding of Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker over his tweets put the institution’s own impartiality under the spotlight.

Lineker’s resoluteness under pressure captured the public imagination and cast an unflattering light on the senior management of the BBC. In this week’s NLJ, John Gould, senior partner at Russell-Cooke, looks in depth at the issues involved, in particular the BBC’s duties of impartiality. How is it defined? What does it mean? What core values are involved? Is ‘impartiality’ the right conceptual approach anyway?

Gould writes: ‘As far as I know, Lineker has not yet been asked to anchor Newsnight, and it seems to follow that Lineker’s work only requires him to maintain impartiality in relation to football. There seems to be no problem with current affairs journalists being partial about sport.’ 

Read more on the headline case here.

MOVERS & SHAKERS

DWF—19 appointments

DWF—19 appointments

Belfast team bolstered by three senior hires and 16 further appointments

Cadwalader—Andro Atlaga

Cadwalader—Andro Atlaga

Firm strengthens leveraged finance team with London partner hire

Knights—Ella Dodgson & Rebecca Laffan

Knights—Ella Dodgson & Rebecca Laffan

Double hire marks launch of family team in Leeds

NEWS
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
In this week's NLJ, Steven Ball of Red Lion Chambers unpacks how advances in forensic science finally unmasked Ryland Headley, jailed in 2025 for the 1967 rape and murder of 75-year-old Louisa Dunne. Preserved swabs and palm prints lay dormant for decades until DNA-17 profiling produced a billion-to-one match
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
Charlie Mercer and Astrid Gillam of Stewarts crunch the numbers on civil fraud claims in the English courts, in this week's NLJ. New data shows civil fraud claims rising steadily since 2014, with the King’s Bench Division overtaking the Commercial Court as the forum of choice for lower-value disputes
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