Talk:Balen Report

Untitled
"This article has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality" - is accidentally amusing. 213.122.30.182 18:06, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

£200,000. Allegedly.
The basic problem with the "price tag" attached to the BBC's efforts to keep the report secret is that the Daily Mail clearly does not have proof of the £200,000 figure. Ultimately it stems from the following "evidence":
 * "A source close to the case said they believed that the BBC had spend in the region of £200,000 on the case so far, while another legal expert claimed the cost could be as much as £300,000."

The report is very carefully worded to give the impression that the figure in question is £200,00 but the operative part of the above is "believed" - i.e. their source does not know for sure themself. All other mentions of £200k are effectively paraphrasing of - or commentary on - this putative figure. There is certainly nothing that justifies the recent change to the effect that, "the BBC has authorized £200,000 in an effort to withhold the report..." The Mail article simply does not make that claim. The reallity is that the BBC could have spent £20,000 or £2,000,000 on this, but there is no clear and unequivacal claim either way, only speculation. Nick Cooper (talk) 20:48, 13 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Trouble is the article's lead says: "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 Daily Mail is claiming that the BBC actually did decide to spend this money.  Where they got this information I don't know, but as a reliable source, it does seem to be claiming that a decision to spend it was made (ie an 'authorisation'). As for how much was actually spent, that is up in the air as per your comment above. Tundrabuggy (talk) 19:00, 14 June 2008 (UTC)


 * You seem to be reading too much into a by no means uncommon journalistic trick. Newspapers will frequently get someone to apply an estimate to a monetary value, and then write the story as if that is definitely the sum involved, while couching the source in suitably vague terms. The most important two words in the story are "they believed" in relation to what their source told them. If the source knew for sure, or the Mail had proof, then the report would have said so, but they don't, so they don't and it doesn't. Clearly the BBC decided to spend an unknown/unspecified sum of money, as they were continuing to fight the issue through the courts, but we can't tie that in with the specific estimate the Mail has accepted in this manner. It's a bit like saying, "X was prepared to bid £10,000 in the auction," because that was the price the bidding stopped at, when in fact they may very well have been prepared to bid twice that amount. Nick Cooper (talk) 21:27, 14 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The Daily Mail says it again in this article: "The BBC's decision to spend an estimated £200,000 of licence feepayers' money to keep the Balen Report secret has been widely condemned."  and "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 Belfast Telegraph. It is a figure that keeps coming up in newspaper articles and cannot be dismissed as a mere journalistic trickery.  Perhaps we can say something to the effect that it has spent an "estimated 200,000₤"? Tundrabuggy (talk) 02:22, 15 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Repetition of an estimate doesn't turn it into a fact; the Mail will stick to what it said first, while the Belfast Telegraph piece appeared a full six days later, and will certainly have been influenced by it. There's actually no reason why we can't say, "The Daily Mail reported that the BBC may have paid between £200,000 and £300,000 to withhold the report," because that's what the report actually says. Nick Cooper (talk) 11:22, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I figure that reliable sources do not make such claims without having some evidence of its veracity. The problem with the use of the word "may" is the implication that they may have paid nothing at all. How about simply leaving out the "may" altogether? or perhaps "The BBC is believed to have paid between ...." ?  Tundrabuggy (talk) 21:36, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Seeing as The Daily Mail is viewed as a reliable source by some, could you please add the following to the articles about cannabis, Afghanistan and Biology and Chemistry articles, "Officials believe the area - near to the Taliban stronghold of Quetta in Pakistan - was turning dried cannabis leaves into heroin.'" Daily Mail. JHJPDJKDKHI! (talk) 15:37, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Lol. Well there is nothing that says that any media cannot err.  Of course one might wonder about the Afghan officials here.  Perhaps they have been smoking that cannabis, or shooting it?  Tundrabuggy (talk) 21:11, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think anyone would assume that they would have got legal representation for nothing, and while it would not doubt have been a sum in six figures, it is still possible that it was less than £200,000. It may only have been marginally less, but we can't say for certain that it is the absolute bottom of the possible "price range". I must say, however, that your trust that British newspapers would not knowingly lie does come across as charming, but somewhat misplaced! Nick Cooper (talk) 23:13, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * lol, you put words in my mouth! Does the media knowingly lie?  I have no doubt.  But WP considers most newspapers as Reliable Sources and we have to put our trust in them until and unless they have proved themselves otherwise, no?. Else what do we have to go on except our  subjective opinions? Tundrabuggy (talk) 01:58, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * So what happens if one paper says the other is lieing or rather says the other is generally an unreliable source? JHJPDJKDKHI! (talk) 08:27, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Neutrality
Sometimes things are so neutral as to lose their meaning (a comment in relation to the first comment on this page.) According to the BCC itself, says it [the BBC] "had been accused of biased reporting against Israel." This is not an irrelevant detail, yet it is addressed in this article as if it were. Tundrabuggy (talk) 01:03, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

"to be published as part of the on-going public debate about alleged BBC bias against Israel." my italics. If this is the on-going debate, it needs to be in here.Tundrabuggy (talk) 01:21, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

"BBC fights to suppress internal report into allegations of bias against Israel"  From the Belfast Telegraph article: "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."

So clearly the report was actually and particularly commissioned over allegations of alleged BBC bias against Israel, yet to read the article, you would not know this. Tundrabuggy (talk) 02:35, 15 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The BBC have been accused of bias in their coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by both sides. If we said that some media sources have accused them of being biased against Israel, we'd have to also mention that others have accused them of being biased in favour of Israel. As we don't know what the findings of the Balen Report actually were, it doesn't seem much use in any case. Robofish (talk) 11:36, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

proposed merge from Malcolm Balen
Malcolm's article is a bit WP:ONEEVENT, which suggests at least considering this merge. What do you folks think? -- j &#9883; e decker  talk  19:28, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Support merge - he doesn't seem to be notable in his own right. Robofish (talk) 14:13, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

BBC Honest Reporting award etc
The BBC has won the HonestReporting annual award more times than any other media outlet thanks to its institutional anti-semitism and anti-Israel bias. Ask anyone who works for the BBC and they will tell you how it is there. The simplistic reason given is that it is to protect the BBCs reporters from the Arabs who would not cooperate/kidnap/murder/torture them if they critisised them or showed them in a bad light! Clearly, they have no fear of Jews or Israel; the worst they would get is a strongly worded letter of complaint! The BBC has lost its moral compass, if it ever had one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.30.20.138 (talk) 12:49, 14 August 2011 (UTC)


 * The same is true of pretty much the entire British establishment. 08:00, 20 April 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.26.195.154 (talk)

Peter Oborne's findings removed?
Why was the section detailing Peter Oborne's findings that the report showed, if anything, a pro-Israel bias? Detailed here: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/peter-oborne-james-jones/pro-israel-lobby-in-britain-full-text#m9

The removal seems politically motivated — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.69.80.20 (talk) 14:52, 8 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Nothing new there, then. Clean Arlene (talk) 15:03, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

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NPOV
At the risk of wading into some kind of politics war, I think lines like this -- 'Helen Boaden, Head of BBC News *hilariously* claimed to believe that this was "an editorial misjudgment".' -- are a fairly clear violation of NPOV. Karl au mu (talk) 09:03, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I see my edits addressing the above have been reverted. I would reiterate that none of the removed material was reliably cited, most of it post-dates the subject in question, and probably amounts to a sythesis, anyway. The Barbara Plett incident is - properly - dealt with on her page already. The accusation against Guerin is far too serious to be cited to nothign more than a blog, and doesn't belong here, either. Nick Cooper (talk)

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First Paragraph abomination
The first paragraph is both extremely poorly written and gives a misleading impression.

The implication is that the report itself was - in the words of the Head of News quoted at the end of the introduction - an "editorial mistake" and so it's purported conclusions are specious. In reality that quotation refers to a specific incident where BBC News reporter Barbara Plett described her sympathetic reaction to seeing Yasser Arafat airlifted to hospital - detailed here: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/the-secret-report-at-heart-of-bbc-s-gaza-paranoia-6870301.html

The entire thing gives the impression of being the mangled remnants of an edit-war. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C5:E401:4600:2109:C0F2:E89B:E6C1 (talk) 13:45, 21 August 2018 (UTC)