BBC President: A Conservative donor banker will be the new BBC President

Richard Sharp, 65, responds to the prototype of the gentleman English; well bred, well built, and with the brains to subtly jump from office to office until he retires to his country residence. At the age of 20 and with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford, he started working at the bank. JP Morgan where it stayed for eight years, until 1984 when it changed to Goldman Sachs, (He worked there for 23 years, until 2007). With his wife also a banker, he amassed a fortune of more than 100 million euros. Since then, he has alternated paid positions such as the Bank of England, from 2013 to 2019, with patronage and philanthropy.

The new president of the BBC He has contributed about 500,000 euros to the coffers of the Conservative Party for several decades, he altruistically advised Boris Johnson when he was mayor of London. He has done the same with the Minister of Economy, Rishi Sunack, whom he had as a subordinate at Goldman Sachs, with the crisis that the pandemic has generated. Sharp ran for president of the BBC in 2011, however, the Government of David Cameron rejected itSo he has been keeping an eye on the chair he will occupy for some time from February 15, from which the impartiality of the BBC is guaranteed and the general director who becomes the executor of the decisions is appointed.

“Is it appropriate for you to receive a job from a ‘Tory’ Cabinet in which two members are your friends?”

With his political background, it is not strange that on January 14, when he was subjected to the questions of the Parliamentary Committee on Culture and MediaScottish National Party MP John Nicolson asked, “Is it appropriate that a great benefactor tory receive a job from a government cabinet tory in which two members are your friends? “Sharp, who had learned his lesson, replied with Labor precedents in office, Gavyn Davies Y Greg Dyke, with the governments of Tony Blair. He argued that he was not “a plugged man” and that he trusted that he was receiving the position “on his own merits.” From 2007 to 2012 he presided over the Royal Academy of Arts.

The ex-banker’s arithmetic and mathematics will have to be honed into the unknown for the BBC, which is funded by the £ 157.50 tax (190 euros) per year per house, justify its existence in the free market defended by the British governments. Boris Johnson has warned that the corporation, subsidized by compulsory license, is heading toward privatization. The myth of its impartiality is increasingly skewed despite the fact that it enjoys a high degree of independence. The corporation’s journalists strictly follow the decalogue that requires them to contrast information, verify accusations, document institutional matters or use only descriptive adjectives. One of its employees, who opts for anonymity, assures that “we are a counter-power; our credibility in the world is the only thing we have.”

Information coverage

Along with the manual that requires verifying data or limiting vocabulary, other aspects are more difficult to regulate. With the selection of news you already take sides. As an example, the BBC only deals with the royal family in its institutional aspectHowever, popularity surveys are only prepared or disseminated if they are of public interest, which, in the opinion of the managers, never are. As an example of vocabulary control, information such as the following is written: “Two Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip in a raid by the Israeli army” instead of “The Israeli army has killed two Palestinians in the Gaza Strip” . Repetition creeps. The veracity of the facts that are narrated, according to the quoted journalist, “is the only condition that the BBC demands of its workers; if the facts cannot be verified, they do not occur.”

In 2000, the journalist Robin Oakley, who had carried political information since 1992, was retired at 58 to make way for Andrew Marr, 40, in time for the 2001 elections that gave the second victory to Tony Blair whose favorite was Marr who still works at the BBC, outdoing his predecessor. “No media is impartial, but here there are control mechanisms to guarantee the greatest possible impartiality”, assures the journalist who knows Spain and recalls the case of Alfredo Urdaci and his “Ce ce oo” referring to the union Commissions Workers (CCOO).

Richard Sharp has waived his salary of 160,000 pounds a year which will be allocated to charities, one of them Quilliam, a think tank to detect and identify Islamic extremist organizations. The BBC has been criticized for impartial in his information on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2004 he commissioned a report (Balen Report) to journalist Malcolm Balen for a detailed analysis of hours of broadcasts on the matter. The corporation did not release the report despite criticism coming from both sides.

The new president of the BBC does not predict major changes in the corporation, neither in its financing nor in the wage gap that began to narrow before he arrived, nor in the challenges of the new technological platforms, and even less in the control of the descriptive or non-descriptive adjectives that collect the bulk book of style; subtleties of the day to day that will slip away in favor of momentous decisions.

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