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The Balen Report is a 20,000-word document written by the senior broadcast journalist Malcolm Balen in 2004 after examining hundreds of hours of the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

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's coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The report was commissioned by former BBC Director of News,

Richard Sambrook Richard Sambrook is a British journalist, academic and a former BBC executive. He is Emeritus Professor in the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University. For 30 years, until February 2010, he was a BBC journalist and later ...

, following persistent complaints from the public and the Israeli government of allegations of anti-Israel bias.

Freedom of Information court case

A number of people requested copies of the report under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The BBC rejected these requests on the grounds that the report fell under a

derogation Derogation, in civil law and common law, is the partial suppression of a law. In contrast, annulment is the total abolition of a law by explicit repeal, and obrogation is the partial or total modification or repeal of a law by the imposition of ...

in the FOI Act: "Information held by the BBC is subject to the Freedom of Information Act only if it is 'held for purposes other than those of journalism, art or literature'." The BBC contended that as an internal report aimed at checking its own standards of journalism, the report was held for purposes of journalism. The BBC's position was challenged by Jewish activist and consultant commercial solicitor at London firm Forsters, Steven Sugar, who appealed initially to the Information Commissioner (who ruled in favour of the BBC) and then to the

Information Tribunal The Information Tribunal was a tribunal non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom. It was established as the Data Protection Tribunal to hear appeals under the Data Protection Act 1984. Its name was changed to reflect its wider responsi ...

(who ruled that the report was not held for purposes of journalism). In 2007 the BBC appealed against the decision of the Information Tribunal to the High Court on two grounds: that the Information Tribunal did not have jurisdiction to hear an appeal from the Information Commissioner in this case and that, even if it did, its decision was flawed as a matter of law. The High Court decided that the Tribunal did lack jurisdiction and rejected Mr Sugar's challenge to the Commissioner's decision. The High Court did not consider the BBC's second ground of appeal. Mr Sugar's appeal to the Court of Appeal against the High Court's decision on the jurisdiction question was dismissed but his subsequent appeal to the

House of Lords The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by appointment, heredity or official function. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminste ...

(then the highest court in the UK) was allowed by 3 votes to 2 on 11 February 2009. Thus the Tribunal's decision in Mr Sugar's favour was reinstated. The BBC retained its second ground of appeal and the case returned to the High Court on 2 October 2009, when Mr Justice Irwin ruled in the BBC's favour. His decision was that the information requested was held 'significantly' for the purposes of journalism and therefore was exempt under the Freedom of Information Act. On 23 June 2010, at the Court of Appeal the

Master of the Rolls The Keeper or Master of the Rolls and Records of the Chancery of England, known as the Master of the Rolls, is the President of the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales and Head of Civil Justice. As a judge, the Master of ...

Lord Neuberger David Edmond Neuberger, Baron Neuberger of Abbotsbury (; born 10 January 1948) is an English judge. He served as President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom from 2012 to 2017. He was a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary until the House of L ...

, Lord Justice Moses and Lord Justice Munby upheld that decision and rejected Mr Sugar's appeal. After Mr Sugar's death in January that year, an appeal by his widow, Fiona Paveley, was heard on 23 November 2011 at the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, which had assumed the judicial functions of the House of Lords in 2009. On 15 February 2012 the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the appeal. All but one judge dismissed it on the basis that, even if information is held only partly for the purposes of journalism, art or literature, as it was in this case, it is outside the scope of FOIA. Lord Wilson would have dismissed it on the basis that, if information is held predominantly for the purposes of journalism, art or literature, it is outside the scope of the Freedom of Information Act and that the Balen Report was held predominantly for those purposes. In May 2021, after the BBC published the Dyson inquiry, Lord Hayward and Baroness Barran of the

called on the BBC to release the Balen Report.

Alleged legal costs

In August 2012, the politics website ''

The Commentator Ibn Rushd ( ar, ; full name in ; 14 April 112611 December 1198), often Latinized as Averroes ( ), was an Andalusian polymath and jurist who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psycholo ...

'' reported a Freedom of Information request they had made which indicated that the BBC had spent £330,000 in legal costs. This figure does not include BBC in-house legal staff time or Value Added Tax.Rocker, Simon (30 August 2012}
spent £330,000 suppressing Balen report"
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The Jewish Chronicle ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...

''. Retrieved 23 January 2023. The BBC's press release following the High Court judgment included the following statement: :"The BBC's action in this case had nothing to do with the fact that the Balen report was about the Middle East – the same approach would have been taken whatever area of news output was covered." The claimant, Mr Sugar, was reported after his earlier success in the House of Lords in BBC v Sugar as saying: :"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. I am very pleased that the House of Lords has ruled that such obvious unfairness is not the result of the Act." However, the High Court then ruled that the BBC was not required to disclose the Balen Report, and in spite of appeals by Mr Sugar and, after his death, his wife, both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court agreed with that ruling, thus clarifying the law applying to any similar reports in the future.

References

External links

* * {{cite web, date = 16 October 2006, website =

Honest Reporting HonestReporting (also Honest Reporting or honestreporting.com) is a non-governmental organization that "monitors the media for bias against Israel" and has been described by several news outlets as a "pro-Israel media watchdog group". The organiza ...

UK, url=http://www.honestreporting.co.uk/articles/critiques/BBC_Something_to_Hide$.asp, title= BBC: Something to Hide?, archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20070822012119/http://www.honestreporting.co.uk/articles/critiques/BBC_Something_to_Hide$.asp, access-date =21 January 2023, archive-date =22 August 2007 2004 documents BBC controversies Freedom of information in the United Kingdom Media coverage of the Arab–Israeli conflict Media bias controversies

Freedom of Information court case

Alleged legal costs

See also

References

External links