The long-running Freedom of Information battle over the Balen Report, an internal review of the BBC's reporting of the Middle East, is to go to the House of Lords.
The Judicial Committee of the House of Lords decided last week to allow solicitor Stephen Sugar to appeal against a Court of Appeal ruling that the BBC did not have to disclose the Balen report on its Middle East reporting under the Freedom of Information Act.
The decision, noted in the Judicial Business section of the Minutes for 22 May, gave leave for Sugar's appeal and said that the petition of appeal should be lodged by June 5.
Sugar, a commercial solicitor from Putney, south-west London, has been campaigning for the BBC to release the Balen report - written by senior editorial adviser Malcolm Balen - to be published as part of the on-going public debate about alleged BBC bias against Israel.
In January, the Court of Appeal rejected his appeal, upholding a decision by the High Court that the BBC was not obliged to release the report as it was exempt under the Freedom of Information Act.
When Sugar first made his request for release of the report under the Act, the Information Commissioner agreed with the BBC that, although it was listed as a "public authority" in the Act, it was exempted from having to disclose material held for the purposes of "journalism, art or literature" and the Act therefore did not apply.
Sugar appealed to the Information Tribunal, which backed him and said the report should be released.
The case then went to the High Court, where Mr Justice Davis accepted the BBC's argument that the Information Tribunal had no jurisdiction to uphold an appeal because the case fell outside the scope of the Act and there had been no decision against which Sugar could appeal.
That ruling was upheld in January in the Court of Appeal by Lord Justice Buxton, Lord Justice Lloyd and Sir Paul Kennedy.
Sugar contends that the Freedom of Information Act has been badly drafted and is preventing disclosure of material which should be publicly available.
The BBC says the Balen report was always intended as an internal review of programme content, to inform future output, and was never intended for publication.
The corporation argues that it is vital for independent journalism that debates among its staff about how it covers stories should not be opened up to the public gaze.
A little tune on the license tax.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/seb.hunt/
A parody with more than a grain of truth in it:
ttp://www.sodall.co.uk/BBC/parody/index.htm
That would be the same BBC who ban on the word faggot in the Pogues song Fairytale of New York, as detailed on their website here. Then about 24 hours later they climbed down and decided that the word faggot was okay again. A humiliating climbdown.That would be the same BBC that after deciding to slash thousands of jobs wasted £120,000 on "free" food and drinks for 4000 BBC staff. Oh thats free food and drinks all paid for from the license tax: link
That would be the same BBC who took terrorists paintballing - From Biased BBC - BBC "took terrorist trainers paintballing"
That would be the BBC that fixes competitions, like this oh and the by now infamous Blue Peter competition fix.
That would be the same BBC that sends its staff on a mandatory new training programme to teach honesty to BBC staff: link.
That would be the same BBC that has failed to promote proper debate on major political issues because of the inherent liberal culture of its staff, a report commissioned by the corporation has concluded: link
That would be the same BBC that employs people from terrorist channel Al Jazeera...link
That would be the same BBC who apologized to the Taliban terriorist scumfucks: link
That would be the same BBC that claims terrorists are an urban myth created by the jews and JW Bush...link
BBC offers aid and moral support to Taliban terrorists, claim that no army is as mobile as them: Link
That would be the same BBC that lies about casualty figures in the Lebanon: Link
That would be the same BBC offering support to Palestinian terrorist scum: link
That would be the same BBC who went to court to suppress the Balen Report on BBC bias with regards their coverage of the middle east.
Oh and the same BBC that denies a pro EU Bias and yet has accepted loans from the EU and for some unknown reason can not see this as a conflict of interest: BBC taking the 30 pieces of silver from the EU
And who tried to infer that 9/11 was America's fault.
Tags:Balen Report Tags: BBC, BBC Bias,
0 people have spoken:
Post a Comment