In 2009, Mehdi Hasan wrote in the New Statesman that the BBC was biased "towards power and privilege, tradition and orthodoxy". He said that the view that the BBC was biased to the left, which he said had been "internalised even by liberals and leftists", "is a calculated and cynical move by the right to cow the corporation into submission". Giving as examples Andrew Neil, Nick Robinson, Robbie Gibb and Guto Harri he wrote that the rightwing backgrounds of "various prominent BBC employees have been curiously unexamined in the row over "bias" ".[13][14] In 2014, The Guardian columnist Owen Jones wrote that "research actually suggests the BBC's output is biased towards establishment and rightwing sources" and that the BBC is "stacked full of rightwingers", mentioning by name chairman of the BBC Trust Chris Patten (former chair of Conservative Party and government minister), political editor Nick Robinson, Thea Rogers, Andrew Neil, Neil's editor Robbie Gibb and Kamal Ahmed.[14]