Off the Air

We are sorry we are not able to bring you our usual program." Instead of using its regular signature tune, the British Broadcasting Corporation began some radio transmissions early last Wednesday morning with an apology. For many viewers and listeners, it was about the only news they got that day. For the first time in 63 years, news programming on the BBC was silenced. The cause: a 24-hour strike. Workers at most of Britain's independent TV and radio stations walked out in support.

The protests were directed at the governing board of the BBC. The previous week, after objections from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, the board had canceled a television documentary that featured interviews with Irish extremists, including an alleged leader of the Irish Republican Army. Thatcher, the target of an I.R.A. bomb last October, had declared a month ago that terrorists should be denied the "oxygen of publicity."

As the controversy grew, Brittan said he had not ordered a cancellation but had objected like "any member of the public." The board of the nominally independent BBC maintained that it had acted because the program was "unbalanced." Others charged that the government's action was censorship. "Unfortunately our board of governors, appointed to be the watchdogs of liberty, failed to bark," said Vincent Hanna of the National Union of Journalists.

Later in the week, the BBC's director general, Alasdair Milne, said that the offending documentary would be shown once it had been re-edited to remove "certain weaknesses." But even that was not to be. After discussions with the board of governors, Milne announced that it would probably not be aired at all this year.