UK: BBC spends £200,000 to Stop Report on Bias Being Published

UK: The BBC has come under fire for wasting huge amounts of license fees - in a desperate bid to bury its own report. The BBC commissioned the Balen Report in 2004, to disprove allegations of anti Israel bias in its news coverage of the Middle east.

The BBC has spent a huge amount of money in a bid to stop publication of its own report - on bias against Israel within news reports. The company has spent over £200,000, but a legal ruling today states that a campaigner who is trying to get the report published can continue his efforts. The BBC commissioned the Balen Report several years ago, but has always refused to make public the conclusions. Now the House Of Lords has ruled that Steven Sugar's case to make the report public was unfairly blocked by bad legal rulings at previous hearings. The Law Lords, by a 3-2 majority, overturned a previous High Court judgement. The ongoing case now returns to the High Court for further arguments before a final decision is made. Now the BBC faces accusations that it is wasting licence fee payers money and is guilty of 'gross hypocrisy' over its stance. The BBC often uses Freedom of Information legislation to break news stories and on investigations for its current affairs programming. The Balen report was compiled in 2004 by BBC editorial advisor Malcolm Balen after numerous and repeated allegations of pro-Palestinian reporting. London solicitor Steven Sugar has been fighting ever since to have its findings made public. He argues that the 20,000-word report by Balen should be published as part of the debate about a perceived anti-Israel bias. The BBC contends that, under the Act, it is exempt from disclosing information held for the purposes of "journalism, art or literature". It argues that the report was always intended as an internal review to help shape future policy on its Middle East coverage. Mr Sugar initially took his complaint to the Information Commissioner, who agreed with the BBC that it did not have to make it public. The campaigner then appealed and won the backing of the Information Tribunal. The BBC then took the case to the High Court which said the tribunal had no jurisdiction. The Court of Appeal upheld that conclusion. But the Law Lords reversed this and said that the tribunal did have jurisdiction, and the case should be remitted to the High Court for a decision on the other issues raised in the BBC's defence. Over the years BBC bosses have faced repeated claims that their reporting of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been skewed. One particularly controversial incident came when Middle East correspondent Barbara Plett revealed she had cried as Yasser Arafat was close to death. Politicians have described the corporation's refusal to reveal the report as 'absolutely indefensible'. The corporation has also employed top barristers to fight its case over the years that the legal battle has continued. Mr Sugar said: 'It is sad that the BBC felt it necessary to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money fighting for three years to try to load the system against those requesting information from it under the Freedom of Information Act.' He added: 'The BBC has finally lost its technical legal argument, the Information Tribunal's decision in my favour has been restored. I hope that the BBC will now stop the legal argument and publish the Balen report. If not, I am confident that my superb legal team will win the whole case in the end. 'The Balen report remains of great public interest. It has recently been claimed that the report concluded that its Middle-East coverage had been biased against Israel and that the BBC decision not to broadcast the charity aid appeal for Gaza was influenced by this.' Mr Sugar has previously said he is prepared to take the case all the way to Europe. A BBC spokesman said: 'We went to court to clarify the law over the jurisdiction of the Information Tribunal and the application of the Freedom of Information Act to Public Service Broadcasters. 'The BBC’s decision to appeal had nothing to do with the fact that the "Balen report" was about the Middle East. It just happened to be the first to go before the courts.