14/2
(Dear Lad Hill
8th February 1968
9/25
May I call your attention to a BBC-2 Television programme about Hong Kong which was broadcast on 9th January at 9.55 p.m., and for which I gave an interview here to Mr. Pettifer.
I
Before this interview, Mr. Pettifer sub- mitted his proposed questions to me, at my request. found a number of these to be unsatisfactory, being either excessively hypothetical or so framed as to require me to deal with the question-begging imputations which were contained in them, before coming to the question itself. In short, the questions were not really designed to elicit information, but to entrap me into a situation in which the interview lent credence to Mr. Pettifer's imputations. While this may be in the BBC's current interviewing style, it is nevertheless as silly as it is unmannerly; and I was naturally not prepared to fall for any such tricks.
G
I
I then discussed with Mr. Pettifer a number of alternative questions which would have had the effect of enabling me to express what I really thought. am grateful to Mr. Pettifer that he did eventually although with some reluctance consent to questions which were more or less acceptable to me. With one exception, which I will refer to later, these were the questions which were in fact asked during a longish interview, and which I answered to the best of my ability. I was able in the answers to cover the situation here with reasonable accuracy and in some detail. One way and another, the whole business
took up two or three hours of my time.
Lord Hill of Luton,
Chairman, BBC,
Broadcasting House, London, W.1.
cc:
Sir Arthur Galsworthy
Hon. C.S.
DIS
TEA