BBC Sport accused of crossing the line with West Brom v Wolves headline after Hawthorns crowd trouble
Julian Shea has revealed that he has never seen the type of headline posted by BBC Sport after the crowd trouble in the West Brom game against Wolves on Sunday (28 January).
The former BBC Sport journalist was responding to a tweet by The Media Mentor account on Wednesday (31 January), where it claimed the headline, which labelled the crowd trouble as “disgraceful”, steps over the line due to the company’s impartiality rules.
It said it’s not the job of BBC journalists to suggest the scenes were disgraceful, with Shea agreeing with the Twitter post and adding that he’d never seen a headline like that in his 11 years working for the BBC’s sports division.
Poor
There probably aren’t many reasonable people who won’t admit that the scenes inside the Hawthrons were disgraceful.
It was everything that the regular matchday-going fans, who turn up every week, don’t want to see associated with their club following the fierce backlash.
But it absolutely isn’t the job of the BBC to decide how people should interpret those scenes, it’s simply just supposed to report the facts.
It says a lot that Shea admitted he didn’t see a single headline like that in his 11 years working for the company, suggesting there was a huge error in judgment to allow it to go out.
But everyone associated with Albion will just want to put the day behind them for various reasons as it wasn’t a proud day in the club’s history.
In other West Brom news, Roy Keane blasted a senior player live on air for what he did against Wolves.
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