Complaining by numbers

The BBC has turned down an FoI request to reveal the number of complaints it has received about interviews with Jody McIntyre conducted on 13th and 14th December.  Jody has cerebral palsy and took part in student protests around Parliament in a wheelchair.  He was interviewed on the News Channel by Ben Brown, and then again on Breakfast tv.   Controller of the News Channel Kevin Bakhurst invited comments on The Editors' Blog, where they remain frozen at 1,065 - public information.  

The corporation says information on the number of complaints is held for "the purposes of journalism" and therefore protected.   The longer piece of the argument goes thus...

If the content of individual criticisms were available for public scrutiny on a regular basis then
programme makers would be under even greater pressure to respond to lobbies or vocal
individuals than they are already.  They might be reluctant to make changes that reflect the views
in the complaints in that they could be accused of “caving in to pressure” and other viewers would
make judgements about the apparent impartiality of the programme.  Conversely, if their
judgement was to ignore the complaints, as they believed them to be invalid or outweighed by
other factors, they will be accused of ignoring public opinion, without the opportunity to explain
the reasons for their editorial judgement. The BBC also believes that publication could lead to a
tit-for-tat escalation of complaints, particularly from lobbying groups or political parties, as
opponents competed with each other in terms of volume and strength of a complaint to the BBC.


Yet Kevin invited people to complain, as long as they explained their rationale.

I am aware that there is a web campaign encouraging people to complain to the BBC about the interview, the broad charge being that Ben Brown was too challenging in it. However I am genuinely interested in hearing more from people who have complained about why they object to the interview. I would obviously welcome all other views. 

Transparency and openness v lobbying and "hacktivism".  A Mexican stand-off, methinks.