When BBC News correspondent Nick Higham suggested Daily Mail readers had "prejudices" it prompted a complaint that went to the corporation's highest echelons.
The BBC Trust's editorial standards committee reached for the Oxford English Dictionary to ascertain whether Higham, in a report about Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre's evidence to the Leveson inquiry, had been unfair to readers of middle England's favourite newspaper.
A single complainant contacted the BBC to say that Higham's report for the BBC1 10pm news bulletin on 6 February had inaccurately reported Dacre's evidence and that the use of the word "prejudices" had done his readers a disservice.
In these "politically correct times", said the unidentified complainant, words had evolved to carry a different, non-dictionary definition.
He added: "I think we all know that the word 'prejudiced' is a perfect example of this."
But the trust's editorial standards committee, the final arbiter of appeals at the BBC, rejected the charge.
The ESC said Higham's report was accurate and had not breached guidelines on due accuracy or impartiality.
Higham's report began: "He's the man who runs Britain's second biggest daily with ferocious drive and a natural feel for his readers' prejudices – though he prefers to call them anxieties."
Higham continued: "Paul Dacre rarely appears in public, but today he came to the Leveson inquiry ..."
The report followed Dacre's evidence to the inquiry, which included an exchange with Robert Jay QC in which the lead counsel to the inquiry had asked the Mail editor whether he empathised with his "readers' fears and prejudices".
Dacre replied: "Anxieties' rather than 'prejudices' is the word I'd use."
The complainant said the report had inaccurately reported Dacre's evidence and led to the suggestion that Mail readers were prejudiced in their views.
The BBC, in its response, said the word "prejudiced" had not been used and was not the same thing as "having prejudices", which could be "mildly pejorative".
The committee of BBC trustees considered the Oxford English Dictionary definitions of "prejudices" and it was "noted that these definitions encompassed both the complainant's and the BBC's interpretations".
It decided that it was "reasonable" for the word to have been used, reflecting a "certain set of preconceived views" held by readers of the Daily Mail.
"Readers of other papers, meanwhile, would have had different sets of preconceived views or 'prejudices'," concluded the committee.
"The reporter [Nick Higham] was describing what Mr Jay and Mr Dacre had said and that, on this basis, he did not express an opinion that Daily Mail readers were particularly prejudiced."
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