Supreme Court: BBC should not have to release internal report
Credit: Fiona Hanson/PAThe UK Supreme Court has rejected an attempt to force the BBC to release an internal report into the broadcaster's coverage of the Middle East.
The court ruled in favour of the BBC today, which had refused to disclose the document because it related to its journalism which is exempt under the Freedom of Information Act.
Lord Wilson said in court: "There is a powerful public interest that the public service broadcasters, no less than the commercial media, should be free to gather, edit and publish news and comment on current affairs without the inhibition of an obligation to make public disclosure of or about their work."
He said it was unanimously agreed that "even if information is held only partly for the purposes of journalism, art or literature, it is outside the scope of FOIA."
It is the latest development in a seven-year legal battle between the corporation and a solicitor, Steven Sugar, who first requested the report under the Freedom of Information Act in 2005 when the act came into force.
The document, by senior BBC journalist Malcolm Balen, looks at how the corporation covered the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in 2003 and 2004.
Sugar's case went all the way to the House of Lords, before returning to the Information Tribunal, which decided that the Balen Report should be disclosed, but this ruling was overturned by the Court of Appeal last June.
Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act in September 2010 revealed the BBC had spent more than £270,000 in legal fees to deal with the Balen report case.
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