Via Recorded Delivery

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

Friday, August 14th 2009

Dear Ms Boaden,

On Monday The Times published a letter by you in which you justified the BBC’s insistence
that newsreader George Alagiah relinquish his patronage of the Fairtrade Foundation. You
stated:
It is not the business of BBC journalism to take a view on this or to be perceived to take a view.
We are committed to due impartiality, which means we do not take sides on issues of
controversy including the fairness of the global trade system. Our job is to represent all sides in
an argument accurately and fairly, and test them as rigorously as we can to allow our audiences
to reach their own judgments. And it is not enough for our journalism to be impartial. We
must also be seen to be impartial.

You will doubtless remember that on September 7th 2007 I wrote to you to bring to your
attention the investigation by fellow freelance journalist Malcolm Keith-Hill and me into the
“Cash for Questions” controversy concerning the former Conservative MP Neil Hamilton and
others. You will remember that I wrote to you in response to your comments on Radio 4's
"Talking Politics" show, broadcast on August 4th 2007, that the BBC achieves impartiality:
a) by being "open to all points of view"
b) by getting "a diversity of views so that the audience can choose for itself"
c) and "to test the evidence" as a means to "get to the truth"

In my letter to you I quoted your remarks, above, and added:

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.

I then brought to your attention a complaint I had submitted to the BBC that same day
concerning the misleading use of inaccurate language by Andrew Marr in a programme
broadcast on June 19th 2007. I ended my letter thus:
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.

However I did not receive a reply.

Though in November 1997 the cross-party Standards Committee rejected the Parliamentary
Commissioner Sir Gordon Downey’s conclusion that Hamilton had taken “cash for questions,”
and though the BBC recognises that Britain’s justice system is not impervious to partial media
reporting nor perjurious testimony, in his response of October 24th 2007 the BBC’s Head of
Editorial Complaints, Fraser Steel, rejected my complaint on the grounds that Sir Gordon
Downey and the 1999 libel trial jury had found against the former MP. Nevertheless, in his
letter Mr. Steel also referred to my 1998 book Trial by Conspiracy, a copy of which I had
supplied to him. He stated:
I accept that the sequence of the [Andrew Marr] programme in question, through its
juxtaposition of words and images, does in effect affirm that Neil Hamilton had accepted cash
for questions. Having read "Trial by Conspiracy", I can readily see the basis for doubting this.

Six months later on March 22nd the widely-read political blogger, publisher and broadcaster
Iain Dale selected Trial by Conspiracy as one of his favourite political books. He states on his
blog:
Boyd-Hunt’s painstaking research alleges there was a media conspiracy against Neil Hamilton
and that he was innocent of the charges Fayed made against him.

Iain Dale’s authority as a political pundit is such the BBC regularly courts his views on
political matters: indeed, he was a principal studio guest on Newsnight only two days ago.
Likewise, as the Head of the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Fraser Steel’s views also command
serious authority. From their written, considered opinions it is quite clear that my book
discusses facts which throw a completely different light on the affair. Yet despite this, and
despite Neil Hamilton’s steadfast pleas of innocence, since my letter to you of September
2007, under your continuing control, BBC News went on to refer to the affair at least another
three times stating as undisputed fact that Hamilton did take cash bribes.

This is not acceptable. Such reporting might well be consistent with the BBC’s coverage since
the controversy’s inception fifteen years ago but it also happens to be the behaviour of a bigot,
at least as defined by the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:
A person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices

Thanks mainly to the BBC’s omnipotence and its unlawful refusal to report the facts, the
world’s history books currently record a demonstrable pack of lies as the truth. This very real
fulfilment of George Orwell’s dark vision would be bad enough if the affair was a trifling
matter, but according to a recent feature in The Spectator chronicling the greatest scandals of
all time, “Cash for Questions” remains this country’s biggest controversy of the last thirty
years, eclipsing both the calamitous Dr. David Kelly Affair and the recent, hugely damaging
MPs’ Expenses Scandal.

Meanwhile, the impact of the BBC’s unlawful reporting on my own life has been devastating:
rather than enjoying great reward from having exposed the gravest story of press corruption
imaginable, I am instead living on state benefits with debts approaching £100,000 and shunned
as a conspiracy-theorist whose research must be erroneous because the impartial and trusted
BBC has deemed it unworthy of an airing.

I remind you again of your understanding of the BBC’s responsibilities, as laid out by you in
your letter of Monday to The Times. You stated:
Our job is to represent all sides in an argument accurately and fairly, and test them as rigorously
as we can to allow our audiences to reach their own judgments.
Such asseveration is irreconcilable with the BBC’s stubborn, enduring refusal at all levels to
heed my calls to assess the documentary evidence collated by my colleague and me.

As the BBC’s Director of News you have the authority and resources to instigate an official
assessment of that evidence. I therefore call on you to arrange for the BBC to conduct an
assessment of that evidence as a first step to giving it a proper airing and so allow for the
BBC’s “audiences to reach their own judgments” exactly as you say.

Constituting as it does the deception of the nation I also request that you investigate the BBC’s
partial, misleading, unlawful reporting of the affair since October 1994 with a particular focus
on reporting which favours The Guardian.

I enclose for your attention:

a) a copy of my book Trial by Conspiracy
b) a flyer bearing extracts of endorsements of our research by reputable politicians and
journalists
c) photocopies of the relevant pages of the abovementioned Spectator feature
“Britain’s 50 Biggest Scandals”

I look forward to your positive response.

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Boyd Hunt

c.c. Mark Byford

Mark Thompson
Sir Michael Lyons