Sir: I read the first sentence of Paul Johnson's article
'When the dialectic fal- ters', which suggested he would respond to the arguments on broadasting impartiality made the previous week by Ian Har- greaves. Mr Hargreaves was one of my former editors at the BBC and has just been appointed Deputy Editor of the Financial Times, having been a correspon- dent there for several years earlier in his career. The second sentence of Mr John- son's article labelled Mr Hargreaves `a media bureaucrat', and asserted that his We's a four-star general!' views were 'predictable' and could be ignored. So at the end of Mr Johnson's second sentence I realised that the dialectic had indeed faltered. I stopped reading the article, the first time I have failed to finish one of his Spectator pieces since he started writing them.
Mark Damazer
Editor, Nine O'Clock News, BBC, Wood Lane, London W12
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