Official complaint to the BBC about Paxman and the British-American Project

After my e-mail exchange with BBC's Jeremy Paxman on his involvement with the British-American Project, I submitted today the following official complaint to the BBC. Please, read here below and use the BBC website's form to send your complaint to the BBC.

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BBC Editorial Guidelines reads:

"Presenters of News and Current Affairs programmes
In the case of those known to the public primarily as presenters of, or reporters on, BBC news programmes and programmes about current affairs, there is a greater possibility of conflict of interest. Care must be taken to ensure that they remain impartial when speaking publicly (see section 2.1 above) and do not promote any political party, campaigning organisation or lobby group which may jeopardise their status as an impartial broadcaster. The chairing of conferences may well be acceptable, but it is essential that the conference is not a promotional exercise or one-sided on an issue of public controversy. They should consult the relevant Head of Department about the suitability of public appearances and conference work. The onus is on the presenters and reporters to inform the relevant Head of Department about the range of public appearances which they undertake."

Not only is BBC's Jeremy Paxman a Fellow of the British-American Project, he's also the "face" of such a Project, being his photo on the homepage of the British-American Project's website where Paxman endorses it with the following statement: "A marvellous way of meeting a varied cross-section of transatlantic friends" http://www.baponline.org/index.html

Among those “friends”, there are Paul Wolfowitz and Diana Negroponte (John Negroponte’s wife) http://www.baponline.org/about.html and among the “friends’ supporters” there are Citigroup, BP, Vodafone, US Embassy, JP Morgan and many others http://www.baponline.org/supporters.html

The conflict of interest for a BBC's journalist to be associated with such a project is even too evident if one reads the Project's Adisory Board's members http://www.baponline.org/about.html and the Project's Committees' members http://www.baponline.org/committees.html


This is outrageous and surely deserves to be taken very seriously from the BBC.

Thank you

Respectfully,
Gabriele Zamparini
London