The author Hanif Kureishi today accused the BBC of “giving in to terrorism” for the corporation’s decision not to broadcast its reading of a short story about the killing of a hostage.

The BBC said that it had chosen to postpone the reading of Hanif Kureishi’s Weddings and Beheadings because the timing was inappropriate.

Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent in Gaza, has been missing for more than a month after he was kidnapped at gunpoint as he drove home from his office in Gaza City on March 12.

Mr Kureishi’s short story is one of five shortlisted for the National Short Story Prize. The authors are being interviewed each morning this week on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and their story broadcast later the same day.

Weddings and Beheadings tells the story of a cameraman who once had ambitions of a successful career in the movies but is instead forced to film terrorist beheadings.

Mr Kureishi, who is best known for writing the films My Beautiful Launderette and Venus and the novel The Buddha Of Suburbia, which was turned into a television series, strongly criticised the BBC’s decision.

Speaking on Today, he said: “Alan Johnston is a hardcore news journalist, a man, I hear, of enormous integrity and committed to telling the truth as he sees it. All of us writers and journalists alike have enormous sympathy for him.

“It seems to me that we show our solidarity with him and with other writers and artists imprisoned around the world without freedom of speech by sponsoring our own freedom of speech.

“It doesn’t seem that censorship by dropping my short story from its supposed broadcast time, it doesn’t seem to me to increase freedom in any way at all, anywhere, and it seems to me to be giving in to terrorism.

“The BBC is not an organisation that’s committed to making decisions around sensitivities of people’s relatives and friends. It’s committed to telling the truth as it sees it. Those of us who work in the media should be promoting and sponsoring freedom rather then trying to constrain it.”

A spokeswoman for the BBC said: "In the light of the news that has been circulating about Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent abducted in Gaza, over the last few days, Radio 4 has decided the story Weddings and Beheadings by writer Hanif Kureishi, one of five shortlisted for the National Short Story Prize, will not be broadcast as planned this week.

"An important criterion when deciding whether to transmit a particular story on an intrinsically difficult subject is the timing of the transmission — and whether there are particular reasons likely to have an impact on the way the story is received and discussed by the audience.

"We do not now feel that it would be right to broadcast at the moment. We will review this on a regular basis. We must stress that we would have taken precisely the same decision if the still unconfirmed claim about Alan Johnston's fate, made on Sunday by a jihadist group, had been made about anyone else. It is our normal practise to review the schedule in the light of sensitive news stories."

The winner of the £15,000 National Short Story prize will be announced on Today on April 23. Other shortlisted short stories are: Slog’s Dad by David Almond; The Morena by Jonathan Falla; The Orphan And The Mob by Julian Gough and How to Get Away With Suicide by Jackie Kay.

Mark Lawson, chairman of the judges, said: “The judges regarded Hanif Kureishi's story as a serious treatment of a new and horrific phenomenon, using fiction to explore events which are to most people unimaginable. We did not believe that Kureishi intended any recognisable reference to any single actual incident in the Middle East, or that one can be read into the story. It's perhaps also important to say that the story was written, first published and initially judged before the disappearance of Alan Johnston.”

Do you think the BBC is right to delay the transmission, or do you agree with Mr Kureishi that it is a form of censorship? Post your comments below.

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