Jeremy Clarkson's sacking by BBC

"The end of the road for Top Gear? May and Hammond pay tribute as BBC sacks Jeremy Clarkson for 'unprovoked' 30-second attack that sent producer to A&E - and police demand to see report" 

Article -  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3010167/Top-Gear-presenter-Jeremy-Clarkson-sacked-BBC-internal-investigation-concludes-did-attack-producer-steak-dinner-fracas.html 

Jeremy Clarkson was announced fired on Thursday the 26th of March. the cause of his sacking is an alleged attack (fracas according to the media) on one of Top Gear's producers Oisin Tymon. The event occurred after a 40 minute argument between the two when Clarkson felt aggravated by the restrictions of food at the end of a work day. The removal of Clarkson came as a shock to the world due to the popularity of the programme, which is "sold in over 200 countries, bringing in about £50 million a year" watched by around 375,000,000. However, it has been suggested that the reason that he had to go was that it was a battle between upholding the key principles and ideologies that BBC aim to convey and keeping a beloved, albeit controversial TV presenter on a successful show. 

In the end it was in fact the principles that were apparently more important to the BBC's director Lord Hall and the Global company, as Clarkson was fired after a few weeks of speculation. the reason that this story has an importance of New and Digital Media is that there was outrage online and there was even a petition that called for the reinstatement of Clarkson as the shows primary host. The petition was a huge success with over 1 million people signing it. This petition was a link that went viral on social networking sites and was shared via Facebook and Twitter to reach such a large amount of people. This shows that news is past via word of mouth (person to person) just as much as the conventional methods in the new and digital era.

Some may suggest that this is a poor decision by the BBC because of the amount of money that he and the show make for the BBC, however as I've mentioned, the ideologies and reputation of the BBC itself is more important than one show for the future. There have been many issues that the BBC have had with Clarkson over the last couple of years, with the uproar regarding the alleged use of the 'N' word in a nursery rhyme style comparison between two cars in one of the shows broadcasted by the BBC in 2014. therefore these sort of problems have led up to this and you could argue that it was expected now or in the near future.