The BBC: Biased Broadcasting Company

Remember that Panorama episode on the BBC that maligned Pope Benedict?

I'll let News Busters introduce this breaking story:

"The BBC, a government agency, fought hard to keep an internal study of the organization's bias secret. Reporters from other British media outlets filed a complaint with the UK's own Freedom of Information Act, and the report has now been released.

The level of political correctness at the BBC seems almost like a caricature of what a politically correct group would look like, but caricature matches reality."

An example?

At the summit, executives were given a fictitious scenario in which they were asked to make a judgment.

In the illustration, Jewish comedian Sasha Baron Cohen would participate in a studio program in which guests were allowed to symbolically throw in a garbage bin things they hated.

What would you do, the executives were asked, if Cohen decided to throw kosher food, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bible and the Quran in the trash.

Everything would be allowed, the executives said, except for the Quran, for fear of offending the British Muslim community.

More:

A senior BBC executive admitted to the British paper Daily Express, "There was a widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness. Unfortunately, much of it is so deeply embedded in the BBC's culture, that it is very hard to change it."

Helen Boaden, the director of the BBC, responds on her blog today: "The point of the Hypothetical is to generate discussion, debate and ideas. The situatations aren't real; the discussions aren't binding and they certainly don't define BBC policy."

I know we haven't seen the end of this story. I'll be watching.