Monday, March 26, 2007

BBC and the Balen report

I paste a post from Stephen Pollard on his own blog. He says it best:


The BBC. This is what they do:

The BBC has been accused of "shameful hypocrisy" over its decision to spend £200,000 blocking a freedom of information request about its reporting in the Middle East.

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.

The corporation is fighting a landmark High Court action, which starts next week, in a bid to prevent the public finding out what is in the review, which is believed to be critical of the BBC's coverage in the region.

...The BBC's decision to carry on pursuing the case, despite the fact than the Information Tribunal said it should make the report public, has sparked fury as it flies in the face of claims by BBC chiefs that it is trying to make the corporation more open and transparent.

Genius. The BBC spends the money we give it to fight the attempt to make public a report which - purportedly - shows the bias in its reporting. So it uses our money to stop us seeing its own evidence showing that we fund a Biased Broadcating Corporation.

The BBC. That's what it does.

1 comment:

William said...

Disturbing that the BBC should wish to cover up an internal report