The war over BBC’s World Cup women
Presenter hits back at men who dared to criticise female pundits
BBC presenter Dan Walker came to the defence of female football pundits yesterday. The Football Focus and BBC Breakfast host spoke out after some viewers questioned the use of female commentators and experts during the 2018 World Cup.
Walker, 41, appeared incensed by the stance of Simon Kelner, a columnist for the i newspaper, who wrote an article expressing reservations about the use of women pundits.
Kelner queried broadcasters’ decisions to hire female Juventus and England star Eni Aluko and the retired England women’s player Alex Scott, who won 140 caps, to give their views alongside male stars such as Didier Drogba and Phil Neville.
Kelner wrote: ‘This is the first time, as far as I can recall, that women have been regulars in this televisual equivalent of a working men’s club, and we can feel pleased that we live in enlightened times.
‘My only question – and I pose it nervously – is this: Why did our major TV channels feel the need to have a female presence on their World Cup panels?’ He noted that while there was ‘an enormous amount of diversity in this competition in terms of race, colour and ethnicity’, the World Cup is ‘competed for, exclusively, by men’.
‘This is not to say that only men have a right to comment on professional football, but my intuition is that the TV bosses sought to have women on the panel for reasons of appearance rather than to satisfy a latent demand to hear their opinions. And isn’t that tokenism in and of itself?’
Walker immediately reponded with a string of tweets including: ‘ Women love football. Women play football. Women can analyse football. You can still love, play & analyse football. It doesn’t mean – as a bloke – you have to be threatened by their knowledge, presence or expertise.’
He added: ‘ Get over it. We can all enjoy the World Cup.
‘Alex Scott has been great at the World Cup. She does her research, knows the game, communicates it well, is a pleasure to work with and – because of this sort of stuff – has to work ten times harder to be accepted.
‘It’s not tokenism, the landscape is changing... for the better.’ One of his posts was retweeted 4,000 times and ‘liked’ 15,000 times.
But one of Walker’s Twitter followers, Jamie Loughran, then asked: ‘ So are they also above criticism if they are poor at it. Just asking, not sure they need a knight in shining armour to protect them! They take the money, criticism comes with the job!’
This week Walker defended Vicki Sparks as she made TV history as the first female World Cup commentator to cover a match, the game between Portugal and Morocco. However, several times she Portugal. presenter: referred Twitter side pointedly Yesterday as ‘ followers, Never to ‘ Porto’ Cristiano told had one instead Alex the of a Ronaldo’s Walker’s male BBC Kerrigan, of commentator for Porto though.’ say Ronaldo plays
Miss Walker Sparks praised on her the debut performance with the of words: ‘Well played Vicki Sparks. A little bit of history made.’
Reaction to her debut was mixed on social media.
Matt Jones said: ‘ History being made on BBC One right now … A huge step in the right direction.’ But Garrett Keogh wrote: ‘Oh no not Vicki Sparks. Awful commentator … nothing to do with her gender.She is just sh***. Almost as bad as Jonathan Pearce.’ Walker, a rising star of the BBC, appeared on the list of the corporation’s top earners last year in the £200,000-£249,999 bracket. His co-presenter on BBC Breakfast, Louise Minchin, did not appear on the list, fuelling allegations of gender bias at the BBC. But when the disparity was highlighted by newspapers as ‘ awkward’, Walker hit back. ‘I tell you what’s more “awkward”... the fact that it’s not true. We get paid the same for BBC Breakfast. Stop lying,’ he tweeted, adding that it was ‘fake news’.
A devout Christian, Walker has struck a deal with corporation bosses that he would never have to work on a Sunday.
‘I was convinced that it was the right thing to honour God and follow his commandments,’ he said in 2010. ‘ Observing the Lord’s Day is a great privilege and brings with it loads of blessings.’ The son of a Baptist preacher, Walker – who grew up in Crawley, West Sussex – has been a regular churchgoer all his life. But he did not become devout until he was 12, when a preacher told him about ‘the reality of Hell for the unbeliever’.
The father of three said: ‘I remember sitting there feeling a deep conviction of sin and terror at the prospect of Hell. I knew that I was offending God with the way I was acting and the life I was living, and the prospect of going to Hell terrified me.’
‘A little bit of history made’