The BBC chairman has said he believes Emily Maitlis was “wrong” in her Newsnight coverage of Dominic Cummings’ visit to Barnard Castle in 2020, as he set out his plan to improve the broadcaster.
Richard Sharp criticized Maitlis, who has since left the station, for starting the program saying “the country” could see Cummings had broken the lockdown rules “and is shocked the government can’t”.
Sharp, who in September rejected Maitlis’ claims that a former Downing Street communications director is acting as a Tory party operative within the corporation, told the Sunday Times that “we are not a campaigning institution. Our approach is present the facts and not drive with the opinion of a station”.
The president also acknowledged that “the BBC has a liberal bias”, but insists that “the institution is fighting it”.
On the question of the impartiality of its news coverage compared to its rivals, Sharp told the newspaper: “We can expose the brutal repression of the Uyghurs in China without having to worry that our business in China will suffer. At a time when some commercial news networks avoid some issues, air conspiracy theories and fake news or misrepresent history, we must continue to lead the world in trusted news.”
The former Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan banker also highlighted areas where he acknowledged the station needs to improve.
Of his business coverage, he said: “I have Bloomberg TV here for a reason. It’s excellent. We have to raise our game.”
He added that the BBC’s correspondents and editors are “first class” but across the institution business and finance “are not as well understood as they should be”. “We need to do a better job of telling them, especially when inflation is forcing the government and the opposition to make very difficult decisions,” he said.
The corporation’s chairman and chief executive, Tim Davie, has launched a coverage review starting with taxation and public spending.
Sharp, who worked as an economic adviser to Boris Johnson when he was mayor of London, also believes the BBC “needs more of a culture of accountability”. “People have felt disadvantaged here, whether it’s minority groups or women,” she said.
In 2018, former BBC China editor Carrie Gracie won her battle over gender pay inequality, receiving an apology and payment from the corporation. In 2020, Samira Ahmed won an employment tribunal for equal pay against the broadcaster. Hundreds of female staff received pay rises.
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In 2017, the BBC’s gender pay gap was 9.3%. The broadcaster says it is now 5.9%. The UK average is 15.4%.
Another area Sharp has criticized is the analysis of audience data, which he believes “has been poor”. “Instead of waiting for the public to come to where we are, we should be alpha-focused on finding out where they are and going there,” he said.
Citing Newsnight as an example, he added: “In an analogue world, 10.30 was a very important time slot that people tuned in. In a digital world, people consume Newsnight-type information when they want, where flight”.
He believes Newsnight’s analysis should be “repackaged and distributed in different ways in new formats on new platforms” and praised social media platform TikTok for its “amazing user experience”.