Unless you happened to be a BBC fan (and therefore on the left, so you saw them as 'balanced) you knew the BBC contained liberal bias.  There were too many examples to count and so by 2007 there was an internal report which concluded that greater efforts were required to avoid liberal bias.

"In the BBC I joined 30 years ago, there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people's personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left," Thompson said.