THE INDEPENDENT: The BBC tonight stood by its decision to invite British National Party leader Nick Griffin on to Question Time as its governing body debated 11th-hour attempts to block his appearance.
Tonight a specially-convened BBC Trust panel met to consider appeals against the ruling that his participation in the flagship political programme should go ahead.
There has been widespread controversy about Mr Griffin's appearance on Question Time tomorrow, with a protest rally to be held in London tonight and further demonstrations planned during the filming of the show.
Today an academic warned Mr Griffin's appearance could boost support for the BNP as happened when French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen made his prime-time TV debut in the 1980s.
But Ric Bailey, the BBC's chief political adviser, said the corporation would have been breaking its charter if it had not treated the BNP with impartiality. >>> Press Association | Wednesday, October 21, 2009
THE GUARDIAN: Censorship is decision for ministers not broadcasters, insists corporation chief
The BBC's director general, Mark Thompson, today robustly defends the corporation's decision to invite the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, on to Question Time, and challenges the government to change the law if it wants to censor the far-right group.
Writing in the Guardian, Thompson says ministers would have to impose a broadcasting ban on the party – as Margaret Thatcher did with Sinn Féin in the 1980s – before the BBC would consider breaching its "central principle of impartiality".
Griffin was not asked on to the flagship current affairs show out of "some misguided desire to be controversial", he says, but because it is the public's right "to hear the full range of political perspectives".
He adds: "It is a straightforward matter of fact that ... the BNP has demonstrated a level of support which would normally lead to an occasional invitation to join the panel on Question Time. It is for that reason alone ... that the invitation has been extended." >>> Robert Booth | Wednesday, October 21, 2009
