One of the BBC’s most senior executives has defended the corporation against accusations that it is “crammed full of soft liberals” obsessed with pushing a politically correct agenda. In an exclusive interview, Mark Byford, the deputy director-general, has hit back at suggestions that the broadcaster is too sensitive to the feelings of Muslim viewers and that it has an inbuilt anti-Christian bias.

Sunday Telegraph, 29 October 2006

Mark Byford may be ambiguous about the possibility of the BBC hiring a niqab-wearing woman newsreader, but his boss Mark Thompson explicitly rules it out. See Mail on Sunday, 29 October 2006