A BBC staff journalist has emailed me with this:

I've noticed the same phenomenon as your correspondent who complained about bias in the Hamas article.

I'm a staff member and write fairly often to colleagues at the BBC web site about stuff that really needs correcting, most recently the reference to David Irving being an academic. I also passed that comment on to Adloyada, as my contract means I can't blog about the BBC or politics myself. They did change the reference a few days later, but neither of us got an acknowledgement.

The same went for an email I sent to the World This Weekend, suggesting that they shouldn't use SOAS's Dr Shrin Akiner as an objective commentator on Uzbekistan as she has ties to the Karimov regime. I've not heard her interviewed since, but I didn't get a reply either.

I suspect the BBC only replies when a formal complaint is made, and just doesn't want to get involved in correspondence. The BBC gets its fair share of nutters writing in, but it's hardly good PR for a tax-funded broadcaster not to acknowledge suggestions when they're made politely and in good faith - especially as it solicits comment on its Newswatch page.

Of course the real issue isn't whether or not complainants are acknowledged; it's whether or not the BBC admits to its own mistakes.

Still, it's nice to know that it's not just those of us who pay for the BBC who are deemed not worth responding to, even when we prompt it to change its stories. The same goes, it seems, even for the BBC's own staff.