Via Recorded Delivery

Helen Boaden
Director of BBC News
BBC TV Centre
Wood Lane
London W12 7RJ

September 7th 2007

Dear Ms Boaden,
I was most encouraged to hear your interview last month by Denis Sewell on Radio 4's
"Talking Politics" programme. In particular, your thoughts on how to achieve impartiality: by
being "open to all points of view;" by getting "a diversity of views so that the audience can
choose for itself;" and "to test the evidence" as a means to "get to the truth".
I could not agree with you more. I considered the evidence to be paramount too, when Martin
Bell stood against Neil Hamilton in the 1997 general election campaign on an anti-corruption
platform in spite of Mr. Hamilton's pleas of innocence and in advance of the publication of the
official investigation into The Guardian's and Mohamed Fayed's "cash for questions"
allegations against him. And so, aided by a colleague, I started to dig for the evidence.
However, we came up with something that it seems few in the British media have the wish to
air: evidence which supports Mr. Hamilton's pleas of innocence and which shows his accusers
lied and forged documents in a conspiracy to support their case against him.
But it seems that at last attitudes could be changing. John Lloyd's courageous book What the
Media Are Doing to Our Politics is certainly a serious attempt from within the media to
address the media's damaging effect on the democratic process. Jeremy Paxman's recent brave
speech at the Guardian Media Edinburgh Television Festival will have helped things too.
However, as long as the important evidence unearthed by my colleague and me remains
unaired, it would be fair comment to contend that the media has no real wish to address its
problems of liberal bias, homogeneity, self-interest, irresponsibility and groupthink at all.
A few weeks ago Andrew Marr betrayed his own reluctance to break free from the shackles of
liberal groupthink, when he used wholly inappropriate terminology in his reference to the "cash
for questions" affair. Accordingly today I have submitted a complaint about this programme,
and I copy it to you for your attention together with all its enclosures.
I trust that this will elicit your concern and that I can rely on you to support my call that the BBC
addresses my complaint faithfully and satisfies my request to finally undertake an assessment of
our research prior to bringing it to public attention and setting right the history books.
I look forward to your positive response.

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Boyd Hunt