LONDON (EJP)--- The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is locked in an unprecedented legal dispute with a Jewish activist who claims its reporting is biased against Israel.

Steven Sugar, a commercial solicitor, is heading for the High Court in a legal battle to force the BBC to release the details of an internal report on its Middle East coverage, which he suspects will prove a bias against the Jewish state as well as pro-Palestinian tendencies.

The court case comes after a protracted and increasingly heated legal battle between Sugar and one of the world’s most famous broadcasters.

Sugar has spent months using Britain’s Freedom of Information laws, designed to encourage openness, to force the BBC to release details of its internal 20,000-word Balen Report, which investigated the levels of balance in the BBC’s Israel reporting.

The BBC refused to do so.

Ministerial backing

Crucially, the Information Commissioner, which adjudicates on Freedom of Information disputes, backed Mr Sugar and demanded the BBC release the report.

Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, public companies are obliged to release internal documents to improve openness unless exceptional circumstances prevent it.

But on Tuesday in London, the BBC confirmed it would still be refusing to release the document, and would take the battle to the High Court - the last legal avenue available to it.

The case is being viewed as a landmark case under British law, which could have wide implications for the future working of the Act and public broadcasters.

Mr Justice Forbes, sitting at the High Court on Tuesday, directed that the BBC’s appeal, and accompanying applications for judicial review, should be heard over two days beginning on March 27.

“Distorted” reporting

Sugar, from Putney, south-west London, who was in court to hear the verdict, was given permission to make his own submissions in person.

He said after Tuesday’s preliminary hearing: "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.

"I myself, as a member of the Jewish community, felt that and was very distressed by it.

"I am even more distressed that the BBC failed, until it commissioned the Balen Report, to respond substantively to the criticism.

"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.

"The BBC is a public body and I believe I have a right to know what the report contains."

The report he wants to see was compiled by Malcolm Balen, a senior editorial adviser, in 2004. It examines hundreds of hours of BBC radio and television broadcasts.

Along with Channel 4, Britain’s other public service broadcaster, the BBC is allowed to hold back material under the UK’s unique Freedom of Information laws that deals with the production of its art, entertainment and journalism.

On this basis, the corporation has rejected more than 400 Freedom of Information requests.

Mr Sugar’s central argument was that the Balen report was not held by the BBC for the purposes of journalism "because it’s a report about journalism itself", and therefore he was entitled to apply to see it under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Information Tribunal agreed with him.

A final legal win for Mr Sugar could mean the corporation having to release thousands of pages of other documents that have been held back.