BBC has problem with liberal bias... says its OWN chairman

THE BBC has a ‘liberal bias’ problem and can suffer from London- centric ‘groupthink’, the broadcaster’s own chairman has admitted.

Richard Sharp said Brexit was a ‘big surprise’ to the corporation because they ‘didn’t understand the “mind” of the country’. To counter such issues the former Goldman Sachs banker is transferring departments from London to the north of England, Scotland and Wales.

He is also aiming to improve the broadcaster’s economic coverage.

Mr Sharp said the BBC had to ‘raise our game’, adding that business and finance ‘are not as well understood as they should be. We need to do a better job of explaining them.’ Mr Sharp is a multi-millionaire who has donated more than £400,000 to the Conservative Party and voted for Brexit.

Speaking to The Sunday Times, he also hit out at former Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis.

Miss Maitlis was criticised for starting a Newsnight bulletin in May 2020 by saying ‘the country’ could see Boris Johnson’s aide Dominic Cummings had broken lockdown rules when he drove to Barnard Castle ‘and is shocked the Government cannot’. Mr Sharp says she was ‘wrong’ to do so, and that the BBC is ‘not a campaigning institution’.