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New Member
BBC director general Mark Thompson has defended the decision to air a Panorama expose of alleged bribery at Fifa.
The much-maligned show was broadcast just three days before Fifa decided on the hosts for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup.
England had been in the running for the 2018 event, but secured just two votes from the committee as Russia took the spoils.
The Panorama investigation, which made claims against four of the 22-strong executive of world football's governing body, has come in for renewed criticism in the wake of the crushing defeat.
Powerful reasons
Thompson, though, insists the BBC was right to screen the show, which he believes contained 'significant information about matters of very serious public interest and public concern'.
He said: "They spent time checking the provenance of this information, putting a number of specific allegations to the people involved, as we must do, and when the programme was ready to transmit, we transmitted it.
"I have to say that I believe that in the end, although I understand that there are often reasons to believe that transmitting a programme might be impolitic or inconvenient, if you believe that you have a matter of real public concern to broadcast, there have got to be overwhelmingly powerful reasons for not broadcasting.
"I believe we were right to broadcast and I believe we have very strong support from the British public in broadcasting."
