BBC’s Radio 4 was supposed to air a reading of Hanif Kureishi‘s “Weddings and Behadings,” one of five finalists for Britain’s National Short Story Prize, this week as part of the ramp-up to next Monday’s announcement of the winner. But programmers decided to drop the scheduled broadcast after reports that jihadists had killed a BBC correspondent in Gaza—and Kureishi says he’s being censored.
“An important criterion when deciding whether to transmit a particular story on a difficult subject is the timing of the transmission,” the BBC told the Guardian. “We do not now feel that it would be right to broadcast at the moment.” But the network also says it would have pulled the reading even if the alleged victim weren’t a BBC journalist, or even a journalist. (So what’s that mean: tThey wouldn’t air the reading of fellow finalist Jackie Kay‘s “How to Get Away with Suicide” if somebody killed themselves and it became a news story?) For his part, Kureishi calls the move “stupid thinking” on the Beeb’s part, not to mention “rather arbitrary.”