A bit of good news at last. No don't get your hopes up too quickly - we are in this for the long haul.

To summarize, I received three emails from Cyril Husbands.

The first email just confirmed Ian Prince's position on everything - it was a rehash of Mr Prince's views, as I explained to Mr Husbands in a very long reply on 11 January.

In the second email, received four weeks later, Mr Husbands modified his position. There was nothing to prevent the reporting of news about civil partnerships, nor news about the anti-homophobia campaign in schools - if it wasn't covered that was simply an editorial decision.

Also, there is no need for LGBT issues to be covered at school before they can be reported on Newsround. The point about coverage of LGBT issues not being precluded from consideration for future editions of the programme was reiterated.

So there is nothing at all preventing the reporting of lgbt issues in Newsround.

I followed this up with an email asking:

If an editor works for the BBC and shows unwillingness to be inclusive and follow a modern diversity agenda, is it reasonable to allow such a bias to go on without some kind of check?

From the point of view of an editorial judgement should diversity be a factor to be considered, and as a Diversity Officer would you agree that it should be a significant part of the editorial judgement decision?


And in the third email I received answers to my questions as follows.

All editors share an obligation to give adequate and meaningful consideration to diversity matters, so bias could not go on unchecked.

Diversity should form a substantial element of editorial judgement.

So that's all that can be achieved for now. We'll just have to keep viewing and see if anything changes. If it does - all well and good. But if after a while there's no indication of change then the BBC will be ignoring their own Diversity Policy.