Hi Mark,

Your brother Garrett Fagan didn't get "sucked into this". He sucked himself into it. Nobody forced him to join us here but once he chose to do so (in a debate about history and evidence)I was disappointed that he did not declare at the outset that he is himself a professional historian. That's why I decided to "out" him in my posting.

Originally I had asked him if an off-the-record rant that he sent me about the BBC Horizon case (he supports Horizon, of course)could go up on this site, along with my rant in reply. However he refused permission. Fair enough. I also asked him if I could put up on the site an earlier massive exchange of correspondence that we had some months ago covering in detail his countless very severe criticisms of my work and my replies to these criticisms. Again he refused permission. Again fair enough. Then suddenly he turns up on my site making debating points -- but nobody is told who he is, which needed to be put right.

Is that what you call getting "sucked in"?

As to your superficial point about "balance" etc in my TV series "Quest for the Lost Civilisation", think again. I presented that story, up front, as MY PERSONAL TAKE on the lost civilistion issue -- a bit like a signed editorial column in a newspaper (the point of which is precisely to allow the columnist to grind an axe that readers are interested in) rather than a supposedly "objective" news report or feature. But BBC Horizon did not (and never does) present signed personalised "columns". It is in the business of "objective" reports and has a 35-year iron-clad reputation for that. So when people watched the Horizon show on me they had every right to expect that they were watching "objective" television rather than opinion. But as we've now discovered, they weren't watching "objective" television at all but a forum, protected by editorial unfairness, that had been given to the personal opinions of a bunch of outraged academics like Ken Feder who seem to think I'm the antichrist.

If the BBC had said at the outset: "here is a programme presenting the opinions of a group of academics who want to teach Graham Hancock a lesson but don't want to hear any of his responses" then that would have been fine and I wouldn't have complained. But "Atlantis Reborn" pretended to be a normal, objective Horizon -- and that was a con trick on the viewers.

Yours,
Graham Hancock