.. was published today. The BBC Trust (whose predecessor commissioned the inquiry) says

The BBC Trust has published today (25 May 2007) the Independent Panel report into the impartiality of BBC coverage of business.

The panel, chaired by Sir Alan Budd, does not believe the BBC has a systematic bias against business. Its overall conclusion is that “most of the BBC’s business output meets the required standards of impartiality”. But the panel also says it “has seen a number of individual lapses and identified some trends which lead to repeated breaches of the BBC’s standards”.

In October last year the Trust’s predecessor, the BBC’s Board of Governors, commissioned the panel:

“to assess the impartiality of BBC news and factual coverage of business with particular regard to accuracy, context, independence and bias, actual or perceived; to assess whether the BBC portrays a fair and balanced picture of the world of business and of its impact on society more generally; to focus primarily on business coverage in mainstream output though specialist business programming should also be considered; and to make recommendations to the BBC Trust for improvements where necessary.”

The Trust discussed the panel’s report at its meeting on Wednesday 23 May.

Text and appendices available here.