The BBC broke impartiality rules

The Mail reports the unsurprising news that:

"The BBC broke impartiality rules in a Hugh Edwards-fronted documentary about Welsh politics that attacked Margaret Thatcher.

The broadcaster’s own governing body today found it guilty of being unfair and inaccurate in the programme.

The ruling came about after an incensed viewer complained about the unbalanced and misleading programme on Welsh self-government.

The complainant said the programme gave an ‘erroneous’ impression that former Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher had ‘caused riots in Wales’.

The viewer spotted that the BBC misleadingly inserted footage of miner’s strike violence from England and implied it was happening from Wales.

Today the BBC Trust, which regulates the corporation, admitted the unlabelled footage had broken accuracy guidelines.

Huw Edwards, who fronts the Ten O’Clock News, was accused of ‘openly canvassing support’ for the Welsh Assembly and was also found to have broken rules.

He suggested on the programme that for the Assembly ‘to achieve its full potential it needs even greater support for the people of Wales than it’s received so far’, adding: ‘The more people that take part, the stronger and healthier our democracy in Wales will be.’

The corporation’s governing body backed up an earlier ruling that his words were not objective and even-handed on the subject.

Its Editorial Standards Committee (ESC) confirmed it was not his role to ‘encourage audiences to exercise their right to vote on particular occasions.’

...

The ESC said: ‘[The committee] considered programme four was not fair and open minded when examining the evidence and weighing all the material facts, nor was it objective and even handed in its approach to the subject of Mrs Thatcher’s impact upon the evolutionary democracy in Wales.’

The earlier report had noted: ‘A number of contributors expressed themselves in terms which were explicitly or implicitly critical of the Thatcher Government, while only one (Lord Peter Walker) could be regarded as speaking favourably about Mrs Thatcher or her approach to Wales.’"