Richard Sharp Says Actions That Led To His Resignation As BBC Chair Were “Misrepresented Wilfully By Other Forms Of The Media”

deadline.com:

“I wasn’t happy at the way my activities were characterized and think they were misrepresented wilfully by other forms of the media.” That is the verdict of ex-BBC Chair Richard Sharp, who was forced to resign almost a year ago after failing to declare his role in the facilitation of an £800,000 ($1.07B) loan facility for former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Speaking for the first time about his experience, the former Goldman Sachs banker told the BBC’s Today podcast a “false narrative” had developed around his actions, and “once it’s out there, there’s nothing you can do about it.” “If it compromised my position, which the noise and the affair did, then the most important interests were what was in the interests of the BBC, not Richard Sharp,” he added. “If you looked at social media it was pretty clear that the priorities should be not my interests but the BBC’s, and pragmatically I accepted that.” He acknowledged there was “contributory negligence” on his part in his failure to declare a meeting with then Cabinet Secretary Simon Case but said his activities had been “misrepresented wilfully.” When the report into Sharp’s actions came out last April, which sparked his resignation, he had said his breach was “inadvertent and not material, which the facts [the report] lays out substantiate.” “Thoroughly unpleasant experience” In an emotional response from the ordinarily mild-mannered Sharp to the question of how the affair impacted him, he said the period prior to his resignation was a “thoroughly unpleasant experience.” “It made me feel some sympathy for people in the public eye in a way that I hadn’t before,” said Sharp. “Our media community can at times be quite vicious, as can social media, but at the same time