The Daily Mail reports that the BBC has so far spent £200,000 in legal fees to cover up the Balen report. Last year, London lawyer Steven Sugar filed a Freedom of Information request for a copy of the report, and the UK Information Tribunal ruled in his favor. The BBC is appealing to the UK’s High Court.
The corporation, which has itself made extensive use of FOI requests in its journalism, is refusing to release papers about an internal inquiry into whether its reporting has been biased towards Palestine.
BBC chiefs have been accused of wasting thousands of pounds of licence fee payers money trying to cover-up the findings of the so called Balen Report into its journalism in the region, despite the fact that the corporation is funded by the British public….
Politicians have branded the BBC’s decision to carry on spending money, hiring the one of the country’s top public law barrister in the process, as “absolutely indefensible”.
They claim its publication is clearly in the public interest.
The BBC’s determination to bury the report has led to speculation that the report was damning in its assessment of the BBC’s coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict that the BBC wants to keep it under wraps at all costs.
The trial begins next week. The Balen report is named after Malcolm Balen, who wrote a report on the fairness of the BBC’s Mideast coverage in 2004. The report was never released to the public. Last year, the BBC turned down HonestReporting’s FOI request for a copy of the report. The trial begins next week.
