Presenter says BBC should have fallen out with Daily Mail over its ‘distortion’ of his criticism of government’s migration messaging

Gary Lineker has said he regrets that a tweet he posted led to a fallout with the BBC, when it should have been a row between the broadcaster and the Daily Mail.

The Match of the Day presenter was taken off air by the BBC in March 2023 after writing on X that the language used by the government to launch a policy on small boat crossings was “not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”.

Tabloid had women on payroll to get stories about people’s sexual performance, singer tells Hay festival

James Blunt claims the News of the World paid women to sleep with celebrities in order to get stories about their sexual performance.

The singer, who settled his legal action against News International in 2012, said the police had sent him emails from the News of the World, which showed that two “beautiful” women were on the payroll of the now closed tabloid “to go out and shag celebrities”.

Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail have endorsed Sunak but messaging is more nuanced in Murdoch’s Sun and Times

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In the build up to the 1992 election the Sun’s attacks on the Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, who had been expected to win, were relentless. On polling day, its front page featured a mock up of Kinnock as a lightbulb with the headline: “If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.”

When he lost, its front-page headline declared: “It’s the Sun wot won it.” Later, the Sun’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, told the Leveson inquiry the headline was “tasteless and wrong”, and that he had given the editor at the time, Kelvin Mackenzie, “a hell of a bollocking”. He added: “We don’t have that sort of power.”

None of them are enthusiastic about Starmer or Sunak. And all are anxious about what comes next

At first glance, it seemed same old, same old. Britain’s print media backed their usual teams when Rishi Sunak announced an election this week. Yet, behind the scenes, much has changed, not least the fact that the party’s traditional supporters on the right are distracted by another battle: one for the soul of the Conservative party and also their own futures.

Britain’s newspapers face an unusual terrain of shifting ownerships and loyalties, making this election one of the most fascinating for years. The battle is no longer just about Labour versus Conservative, but different factions of the Conservative party itself. And it’s a fight that will be televised for the first time by GB News, the opinionated upstart TV channel facing regulatory sanctions over its lack of impartiality.

Jane Martinson is a Guardian columnist

Veteran Fleet Street journalist who joined the Guardian in the 1970s and reported on the Falklands war for the paper in 1982

Being marooned on a heavily laden ammunition ship in San Carlos Water at the height of the 1982 Falklands war during Argentinian air attacks was the punishment meted out to the Guardi journalist Gareth Parry by the Ministry of Defence for not writing what the military wanted.

Gareth, who has died of prostate cancer aged 86, had a tough war. He and the crew of the RFA Resource survived only because the bombs bounced off the supply ship and failed to explode – the Argentinian armourers had set the fuses wrongly.