Offending others...

It seems the BBC is becoming more and more embroiled in various issues concerning its impartiality. No need to look far for details, just Google BBC bias and there are various sites dedicated solely to bringing it to our attention! Many of these sites could be dismissed as being overly polemic and bias themselves, however many are not and more and more the BBC is coming under the media spotlight. The BBC have never been particularly bothered about offending all sorts of people, political parties, oragnisations and religions. Regular posters on Radio 5 Live message boards know of this more than most because it is constantly (constantly!) being discussed: there was the Iron Naz case and now colonelartist and others have joined the infamy: The Useful Idiot blog keeps us up to date and it has now been followed up in yesterday's Daily Mail. Being fair, all this could all be 'dodgy moderation' of posts and not laid at the door of 'Auntie'. However, this is not the 'offending others' I refer to in this post's title:

In today's Observer David Smith reports how the "BBC has abandoned plans to screen a fictional terrorist attack by Muslim suicide bombers in the primetime drama Casualty after internal clashes over whether the highly sensitive subject matter would cause offence." Hmmm...sensible you say, wouldn't want that although the drama executives were happy with the storyline (as they should be) but..."they were overruled by the corporation's editorial guidelines department, which ordered that the episode be changed so that the Muslim characters were replaced by animal rights extremists."

"A source close to next month's new series of Casualty, the long-running BBC1 hospital drama, said that it was to start with a two-part special in which a young Muslim runs into a bus station and blows himself up. Another Muslim is wearing a suicide vest but fails to detonate it; instead he is injured and the vest has to be carefully removed. The source said that senior figures in the drama department supported the idea but were blocked by editorial guideline staff, who oversee the corporation's editorial and ethical standards. The drama staff were overruled because of concerns that the story would perpetuate stereotypes of young Muslims in Britain."

'Editorial and ethical guidelines' MY ARSE! Can anyone suggest ANY other group that would have caused the BBC to change the story? (The animal-rights bomb episode will go ahead) It also underlines the fact that the BBC DOES have bias enshrined in it's own editorial guidelines.