The BBC has been criticised for advertising a job exclusively for "black, Asian and ethnically diverse" applicants.
The £17,810 trainee production management assistant, who will be based at BBC Pacific Quay in Glasgow, will work on shows like The One Show, Springwatch and The Truth About series.
The advert was posted online by Creative Access, a company that seeks to increase the number of minorities working in the arts. We also post a screen-grab of the relevant page, as the negative publicity will result in its amendment or removal.
According to the ad: "The successful candidate will be someone with a desire to build a career in the TV industry and a demonstrable interest in BBC Studios."
Whoever gets the role will "support television projects from pre-production through to channel delivery, working with the production management team and gaining an overview of the production process".
Positive discrimination is unlawful under the Equality Act 2010, but "positive action" is permitted for trainee and internship positions in sectors where minority groups are under-represented.
A statement by the BBC said: "The BBC is a welcoming, inclusive organisation committed to representing and reflecting our audiences.
"We support a scheme organised by Creative Access, an independent organisation dedicated to increasing diversity in the creative industries, which provides development roles, fully in line with the Equality Act."
Joe Ventre, of campaign group The TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "BBC bosses shouldn't be supporting race-based recruiting with taxpayers' money.
"Taking an approach like this further undermines confidence in the Corporation and their use of licence fee payers' cash."
We totally agree. The salary for this role might be small beer to the gloated national broadcaster, but as a point of principle it should be recruiting based on ability rather than trying to meet some sort of politically-correct diversity quota. If the best candidates fall into an under-represented group then that's great, but if they don't then they shouldn't be shoe-horned into a job on the basis of their ethnicity or disability.
We can think of several examples of BBC "talent" that can barely string a coherent sentence together or read an autocue. They short-change BBC audiences every time they appear, yet are safeguarded in their roles because they tick a box on a diversity proforma.
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