At Last: BBC Told To Ensure Balance On Climate Change
The Daily Telegraph, 13 October 2010
by Neil Midgley
Climate change sceptics are likely to be given greater prominence in BBC documentaries and news bulletins following new editorial guidelines that call for impartiality in the corporation’s science coverage.
The BBC has been repeatedly accused of bias in its reporting of climate change issues.
Last year one of its reporters, Paul Hudson, was criticised for not reporting on some of the highly controversial “Climategate” leaked emails from the University of East Anglia, even though he had been in possession of them for some time.
Climate change sceptics have also accused the BBC of not properly reporting “Glaciergate”, when a study from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) saying that glaciers would melt by 2035 was discredited.
But the BBC’s new editorial guidelines, published yesterday after an extensive consultation that considered over 1,600 submissions by members of the public, say expressly for the first time that scientific issues fall within the corporation’s obligation to be impartial.
“The BBC must be inclusive, consider the broad perspective, and ensure that the existence of a range of views is appropriately reflected,” said BBC trustee Alison Hastings.
“In addition the new guideline extends the definition of ‘controversial’ subjects beyond those of public policy and political or industrial controversy to include controversy within religion, science, finance, culture, ethics and other matters.”
However James Delingpole, a prominent climate change sceptic, yesterday said that he predicted little movement in the BBC’s environmental stories.
“It’s highly unlikely that they’ll be more balanced in their coverage,” he said.
“It’s a whole cultural thing at the BBC – that people who don’t believe are just ‘flat earthers’. Whenever they invite dissenters like me on to debates, they surround us with ‘warmists’. On Any Questions, for example, Jonathan Dimbleby does his best to be impartial, but this is a man with a wind turbine in his garden.”
In 2007, a BBC Trust report called Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st Century said: “Climate change is another subject where dissenters can be unpopular … The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus. But these dissenters (or even sceptics) will still be heard, as they should, because it is not the BBC’s role to close down this debate.”
The BBC Trust is also currently conducting a separate review into impartiality in the corporation’s science coverage, led by Professor Steve Jones from University College London, which will report in the spring of next year.
Professor Jones has been asked to consider whether the BBC’s output “gives appropriate weight to scientific conclusions including different theories and due weight to the views expressed by those sceptical about the science and how it was conducted or evaluated.”
I thinks it’s about time the BBC became a PLC. Let’s see how long its various leftie and greenie biases last when separated from the £billions legally extorted from private UK citizens via the TV licence.
I have to agree with Dellingpole. A few words in a policy statement is not going to change “blind” obedience to their god. They will simply not find anyone or anything on the skeptic side to report on, or to offer comments on pro AGW articles. Or, more probably, they will simply not recognize an article as being on climate change, instead being something dealing with administrative matters or politics.
UK Sceptic says:
October 14, 2010 at 11:21 am
I thinks it’s about time the BBC became a PLC. Let’s see how long its various leftie and greenie biases last when separated from the £billions legally extorted from private UK citizens via the TV licence.
Much as I agree that the BBC is biased in favour of the greens (and the left on some but not all issues), I don’t think privatisation is the way forward; The Daily Telegraph and Times are both very keen on AGW, and they are hardly run by a bunch of lefties with a fondness for out of season blaeberries.
This was discussed on Yahoo climatesceptics some time ago. I believe it was Richard Courtney who went after the BBC with FOI. As I try and remember, when Lord May was President of the Royal Society he took some 20 scientists to meet with a similar number of senior BBC staff. It was after this meeting that the BBC adopted it’s policy of only reporting pro-CAGW news. Presumably this is merely a reversal of this policy, and we might see a significant shift.
The BBC is institutionally biased and this guideline is no more than lip service to journalistic standards and there will be no sea change.
As noted the BBC is heavily influenced by the government (overwhelmingly so when the governmnent is left wing or liberal) and therefore tends to tow the party line especially if this fits in with the views of the leftish geeks who run the show.
Further, the BBC’s pension fund is hugely invested in green technology. The BBC needs to talk up green issues to prevent pension deficits and therefore has a vested interest in talking up AGW.
As a good proportion of the BBC’s pension pot sits in ‘green’ portfolios, I don’t think we’ll be seeing much change soon. However, provided people are willing to spend the time complaining when they see unbiased reporting on climate issues, then this ‘ruling’ gives them more power, and with continual pressure change can be forced to happen.
We should give the BBC a chance to prove their commitment to neutrality. Nothing would please more than Connely having to say the BBC is not a reliable source and remove all Wiki articles that have a BBC link. That would inflame some people.
The BBC News first reported the Asian Tsunami as “caused by Climate Change”, and they never issued a retraction, they just sort of ignored what they initially reported as the cause.
The BBC News have also reported that coastal erosion in Norfolk, houses falling in the sea etc, is caused by Climate Change. I wrote, complained, and pointed out that they were correct that coastal erosion of Cliffs made of Glacial Deposits, was due to Climate Change, in this case the climate change that occurred 10,000 years ago.
If America’s own PBS NewsHour is ever told to ‘put things back even’ they would have their own tough hill to climb. In my American Thinker article “The Left and Its Talking Points” ( http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/the_left_and_its_talking_point.html ), I tell how they had over 200 program segments about AGW in some form or another going back to 1996, with only three giving any usable mention of skeptic science.
The BBC staff pension fund is heavily invested in “green” technologies, to a greater extent, IIRC, than any other major UK corporation.
The UK government is heavily into “green” corporatism . The Climate Change minister, Tim Yeo, is an investor in, and on the board of a handful of “green” technology companies, some of which he chairs. Since this is all very well aligned with the BBC’s stance, not just on AGW, but other “green” issues, I do not expect any change during the term of the current parliament (and probably beyond).
I suggest a boycott of the BBC (don’t watch BBC TV, and you don’t have to pay their license fee) would be a better method of achieving change than dreaming about any change from the top.
All the best.
Jonathan Dimbleby does his best to be impartial, but this is a man with a wind turbine in his garden.
Dunno anything about Dimbleby, and I’m not sure what this is supposed to tell me. I mean, I’ve heard of a reputable climate realist who has solar panels on his roof…. : > )
Andrew P,
The Times and the Guardian can be what ever they want simply because no one is forced by law to buy their news papers. With the BBC it is different. Here in the UK we HAVE to pay for the BBC.
Mailman
I suggest a boycott of the BBC (don’t watch BBC TV, and you don’t have to pay their license fee) would be a better method of achieving change than dreaming about any change from the top.
Oh you do have to pay, even if you watch on a pc!
Unfortunately for balance, the scientific literature found in peer reviewed journals is strongly biased in favor of green house gases causing serious climate warming. What does balance mean in this situation? Should balance be based polling or the popularity of internet blogs? If 90% of scientific articles support AGW, would balanced reporting also give 90% support to AGW?
Lord Reith (first and great director general of the BBC) must be spinning in his grave at the lack of impartiality and disinterest in the BBC. They will spin anything, yes anything, as driven by AGW. They are an outrage to the licence fee public. They exemplify perfectly the development of contemporary society, first catered by cheap daily papers and weekly ones, the spread of tertiary education, which resulted in a large population with well developed literary and scholarly tastes – but all sufficiently uneducated to undertake analytical thought. The pavlovian response by the BBC is to spin anything that can possibly be attributable to AGW. Do we laugh? Or do we cry? Meanwhile, the Royal Society, stamps itself indelibly into history by refusing to debate the issue. Rees and May will have a lot to answer for when posterity looks back at today.
If the BBC’s record on political impartiality is anything to go by, they will never live up to their duties under their own charter.
They seem to think that they can demonstrate impartiality only through issuing statements of impartiality, without actually having to be impartial in practice.
Paul Deacon, Christchurch, New Zealand says:
October 14, 2010 at 12:33 pm
“I suggest a boycott of the BBC (don’t watch BBC TV, and you don’t have to pay their license fee) would be a better method of achieving change than dreaming about any change from the top.”
Would that it were so. In fact, It wouldn’t matter if you could prove your TV had been disabled from receiving BBC programmes – the licence fee is still due in full. It’s been admitted by government that the licence fee is, in effect, a TV tax, not a BBC tax.
If you don’t have a TV and don’t pay the tax, that’s okay. However, You can be sure that this will be picked up quickly and you’ll have people from TV licensing round in a jiffy to accuse you of evasion. I’m being perfectly serious here, by the way. It is presumed that every household has a TV, and if there is no revenue from it, evasion is presumed.
The BBC cannot be unbiased, it is too heavily involved financially with CAGW.
“The BBC is the only media organisation in Britain whose pension fund is a member of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which has more than 50 members across Europe.
Its chairman is Peter Dunscombe, also the BBC’s Head of Pensions Investment.”
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/156703/-8bn-BBC-eco-bias-#
Would you talk down the value of your own pension? I think not.
Was it the complaints registered to Ofcom that prompted all of this action?
Ref:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3358634/BBC-investigated-over-climate-change-documentary.html
I think this is a good idea
The sooner the UK public can see the reality of the inconsistency of (and lack of scientific backing for) the anti-AGW arguments the quicker we can get on with implementing the changes to tackle the problem.
I’m just waiting for the program where we get some saying it isn’t warming , some saying its solar activity , some saying it’s a scientific conspiracy and a series of fact showing the artic melting , the solar minimum and the reality of normal scientists.
The BBC might even sell the program to other media organisation so it might end up on TV in the US .
The BBC has long had a built in institutional bias to reporting all matters in a trendy and/or liberal/lefty way. Nothing is going to change this, unless you clean out the Augean Stable and that is not going to happen anytime soon.
The BBC is top heavy with overpaid executives, mostly of the ‘sensible sweater’ variety. These individuals would be largely unemployable in the real world and therefore will do nothing to implement real and meaningful change.
They are part of a mutual support organisation, similar to climate ‘scientists’, where dissension is not tolerated and only the status quo of what the Establishment deems good is allowed.
Having said that, it is still one one of the most professional and least biased news organisations when it comes to reporting facts.
However, the BBC still refuses to recognise that climate ‘science’ obviously does not fall into the category of ‘facts’, but rather of a cult run by a small group of grant-financed individuals, purveying dubious theories in the form of scary unfounded forecasts and models, which in turn are based on manipulated, strangled or falsified data.
On the one hand I’m with Dellers, no change likely.
On the other hand, Richard North was invited onto Radio Oxford…
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/10/political-theatre.html
DaveE.
The BBC won’t change their biased reporting whilst they have so much money invested in the AGW scam http://www.iigcc.org/about-us/members
There is no honesty or integrity in science, politics, journalism etc,. views, theories, policies and reporting all come down to money over honesty.
Black and Harrabin have their snouts in the ideological trough. Nothing will change.
Paul Deacon,
It’s not that simple. If you watch any broadcast by any broadcaster on any medium (TV,satellite, digital box, computer or mobile phone) as it is actually being broadcast you have to have a licence.
Doesn’t matter if you never watch BBC at all.