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23 February 2001
Dear Mr Boyd Hunt,
Re: Complaint against Granada Television
Thank you once again for your complaint of 14 July 2000, and subsequent correspondence, about Granada Television and its coverage of the dispute between Neil Hamilton and Mohammed Al Fayed. I am now in a position to give you a substantive reply to your complaint. I am sorry that this has taken so long. As you know, Granada took much longer than the ITC normally allows, to send its response. While we believe that Granada could and should have been quicker, we do accept that a considerable and unusual amount of archive checking was involved. As you know, it was only exceptionally that the ITC agreed to entertain your complaint, more than three months after the relevant transmission date (the three months being based on the period for which broadcasters like Granada are legally obliged to keep tapes and supply them on demand to the ITC).
Patricia Hodgson, the Chief Executive, will be writing to you separately with regard to your inquiry about the packages you originally sent to the Commission in July 2000.
The ITC has no statutory duty to consider complaints, but we do so as a matter of policy and have done since the ITC's inception as one of the means of ensuring that broadcasters are meeting their obligation to comply with the Programme and other Codes. As explained in Chris Banatvala's letter of 4 January, complaints are investigated and considered, in the first instance, by ITC staff. This is why, as noted in my letter of 23 August, Sir Robin Biggam referred the matter to me. However, I can reconfirm to you that your submission has been forwarded to all the other Members and the outcome of the staff s investigation has been reported to them.
Our complaints handling procedure is based on a scrutiny of evidence sent by complainants and the broadcaster, together with the relevant programme output where available. As explained to you in Chris Banatvala' s letter, it is not part of the process to send complainants correspondence from the broadcaster. (Similarly, we do not normally send broadcasters the correspondence from complainants, who have the right to anonymity if they wish. We simply put to the broadcaster the possible points of concern to the ITC, in relation to our Codes). We note that Granada Television has refused to supply you with its response. However, we have completed the investigation under our normal procedure, which considers all relevant evidence supplied to us by both the complainant and licensee.
It should also be noted that a large part of your complaint deals with matters outside the remit of the ITC. The ITC cannot examine or discuss, for example, matters pertaining to newspapers, newspaper journalists or the BBC. In particular it is of course not for the ITC to comment on the merits or demerits of the arguments on either side of the case (ie. the Al Fayed/Hamilton affair).
Your complaint focuses on Granada and, for the sake of this inquiry, we have considered Granada' s records of its transmissions, from 20 October 1994 (the date the first set of allegations against Neil Hamilton were published in The Guardian) to the present day. However, we should make the point that the requirement for due impartiality applies across Granada' s television output, including regional and network programming and network news and, therefore, ITN news and any other coverage available to viewers via Granada is relevant.
This issue, as you point out, has been a major political controversy. Granada has reported on it on at least 23 occasions, in its regional news service. It has not produced any material for the ITV Network. The broadcaster also wishes to point out that it has only covered this as a news story, i.e. it has not sought to investigate the quality of the claims and counter-claims, or in any sense to 'drive' the story. While it has broadcast no details of your book of investigation, neither has it reported on the details of The Guardian's book 'Sleaze'.
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