The Sunday Times is reporting that an internal BBC report to be published next week will conclude that the corporation is institutionally biased in favour of the left wing causes held dear by most of its staff and journalists. While it is nice to have confirmation of what most of the dextrospere has long known, we have no idea of whether the report will actually have any effect in practive. It's much more likely that it will be paraded as evidence that the Beeb has changed while actually leaving everything just as it is.
If the BBC is sincere about wanting to correct the imbalance we might expect to see a number of actions.
Firstly, heads would have to roll. The requirement to be balanced is a key part of the BBC's charter - such a flagrant breach surely demands a major clear out of the senior staff who have allowed this state of affairs to continue unaddressed for so many years.
The placing of BBC job advertisements in the Guardian, to the virtual exclusion of any other newspapers, should be ended. There should be a defined period - say ten years - in which all BBC jobs are only advertised in the Telegraph. This should help redress the balance in the staffing.
The BBC's disinformation campaigns on behalf of environmentalists and socialists need to be reversed. There needs to be an sustained series of programmes to question global warming, recycling, UK membership of the EU, and all the other myriad causes for which the corporation acts as an unpaid cheerleader. The BBC has told one side of the story for many years. In order to redress the balance it needs to tell the other side, and the other side only, for many more years to come.
Of course there's not a cat's chance of any of this actually happening. There will be a fuss this week when the report comes out. Then when it's all died down again, the red flag will be raised again over Television Centre and normal service will be resumed.