Perhaps it was inevitable, but the BBC has been plunged even further into the quagmire that is the media debate over the airing of an aid appeal for Gaza.

According to The Guardian, two Gaza residents have commenced legal action to persuade the corporation to lift its ban.

Based in Clerkenwell, Hickman & Rose have since compiled a 23 page letter to the BBC requesting a judicial review should the Disasters Emergency Committee film not be aired.

Titled Legal Challenge to the Decision not to Broadcast the DEC Appeal, the letter is sent on behalf of three people, two of whom are Gaza residents.

The letter further condemns the decision as “irrational or otherwise unlawful” and an abrogation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Since the furore erupted almost 21,000 complaints have been lodged.

Oddly, BSkyB also refused to air an appeal, yet has attracted much less media attention.

The decision not to air a DEC film raises the sticky question of media rights: does the corporation have a moral obligation to heighten awareness to a humanitarian disaster, or is its foremost concern with, as the BBC is fond of upholding, objectivity?

Had the corporation been uncharted territory when it comes to DEC films, perhaps the argument of objectivity would ring sincere; alas, having already screened appeals for other conflict zones, the morality issues cannot be ignored.

We cannot pick and choose our battles, and accordingly, neither our moral obligation to aid others in times of strife.

Simply, human kindness is the best we can arrive at, and as a public service, the BBC should represent that aspect, rather than the journalistic (albeit often elusive) quality of objectivity.