According to the Jewish Chronicle, the BBC has spent "up to half a million pounds of licence payers’ money on lawyers" to keep the Balen Report covered up.
In 2004, the BBC asked Malcolm Balen to investigate its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Two years ago, London lawyer Steven Sugar sought a copy of Balen's report under the Freedom of Information Act. Sugar's initial success led to a wave of FOI requests, including one from HonestReporting.
Martin Rosenbaum, who blogs for the BBC on freedom of information issues, was perhaps the only Beeb employee to frankly acknowledge the conundrum on the record. In 2006, Rosenbaum wrote:
. . . I have decided the safest thing to do is just look puzzled. That seems to work so far.
The BBC is funded by a license fee and the public deserves to know what's contained in the report.
