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[Adventurer]

The BBC was in court yesterday fighting over the public's right to know. But the Corporation was not battling to bring information into the open. Instead it has paid an estimated �200,000 in legal fees to keep the report secret.

The Corporation is trying to persuade the High Court to overrule a decision by the Information Tribunal that an internal report into the BBC's Middle East coverage should be made public.

It puts the Corporation in the awkward position of arguing that the Freedom of Information Act should not apply in this case, although their journalists have previously made free use of the Act to prise information from the Government.

The dispute is over a 20,000-page report commissioned four years ago, at a time when the Israeli government had announced that it was withdrawing all co-operation with the BBC staff stationed in the Middle East, including all the help BBC journalists could normally expect with issues such as passports and visas.

Steven Sugar, a commercial solicitor from Putney, west London, put in a request to the BBC to see the whole report, citing the Freedom of Information Act.

"A very large proportion of the Jewish community felt rightly or wrongly that the BBC's reporting of the second Palestinian intifada or uprising that broke out in 2000 was seriously distorted," he said. " I myself, as a member of the Jewish community, felt that and was very distressed by it.Now I don't know whether it is important to see this report or not. Instinct says that if they don't want to give it to me it may be important."

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article2398870.ece

[I think the whole article is worth a read. The BBC has tried to placate the Israelis, sent in a consultant to show Israel they were not being biased, and there were certain embarassing moments. People have criticized the BBC of bians towards both groups. Anyway, suppressing a report doesn't make sense. It's undemocratic.]