I’ll be honest and say that I’m deeply sceptical that this or any other submission will make much difference, but I admire their tenacity.
Andrew Montford ( Bishop Hill ) and Tony Newbery (Harmless Sky) have put in a submission to the BBC’s Review of Impartiality and Accuracy in their coverage of [Climate] Science. It’s a good read and summarizes very well some of the major areas of complaint about the BBC’s slanted reporting on environmentalism, scepticism and global warming.
In order to get to send the submission, they had to go through the usual Byzantine intrigue of working out just where to send it and to whom to address it.
Over the last several years, Tony N (Harmless Sky) and I have taken a great deal of interest in the BBC’s coverage of the climate debate, and this has involved a good deal of behind-the-scenes research. So we were obviously interested when the BBC Trust announced in early January this year that they were to conduct a review of the impartiality of their science coverage.
Our first reaction was to write to Professor Richard Tait, the trustee who was fronting this project, requesting that we should make a submission to the review and pointing out that the main critics of the BBC coverage of AGW were in the blogosphere. Not only were we unable to get a reply form Professor Tait, but we were unable even to get confirmation from the secretary of the Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee that he had been given the letter. This will be the subject of another post.
Fortunately, in April, I happened to spot a request for comments from the general public on an obscure BBC web page. He contacted Professor Steve Jones, the person commissioned by the BBC Trust to conduct the review, who proved to be rather more approachable than Professor Tait. It was quickly arranged that we should make a submission before the end of October. His report is due to be published in the Spring of 2011.
Anybody holding their breath? Me neither.
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Removing one grain of sand from a hole does not seem to do any good. But over time, it makes a difference.
Media Science=BBC Science=Hollywood Science…..No extreme winter time cold will ever make them change.
Last winter we enjoyed, here in WUWT, a complete painted white UK, how will it look this time, a new Greenland perhaps? 🙂
The BBC has remarkably blatant left/liberal/socialist leanings.
They will never allow the skeptical point of view to gain traction within their system because it is seen as a right wing ideology by the BBC. Obviously the recruitment process at the BBC was designed to achieve the left bias becoming institutionalized. It happened before Blair was elected but it has strengthened and deepened since then.
Listen, as I do, to the World Service and the Africa Service and you will be astounded at the anti-capitalist anti-conservative, anti-science bias it has.
The link to Bishop Hill for the BBC review is broken. The following appears to work.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/storage/BBC%20Science%20review%20submission%20Final.doc
Well, I applaud their effort, at any rate. But, yeh, they’ll change as soon as our NPR and PBS change their POV.
I get a “Page Not Found” when I hit the link. You can go from there to the Front page and find the submission, but I don’t think the link is working correctly.
[Thanks, fixed. ~dbs]
The BBC has nothing to gain by entering such correspondence. If being a member of the club called “Ignore It And It’ll Go Away” wasn’t enough, BBC staffers are terrified of upsetting their political masters’ carbon tax schemes. But we’re not finished yet – because the BBC staffers’ pension scheme – which has already provoked strikes about potential cuts in pension payouts – is up to it’s neck in carbon trading funds.
The man responsible for looking after the fat pensions of BBC staffers is Peter Dunscombe, and he is a “man-made climate change” fanatic.
Peter Dunscombe is part of an international group of investment managers who bust a gut to invest in “climate change” schemes, and he runs the £8.2 billion BBC pension fund. He is also Chairman of the Institutional Investment Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) which has 47 members and manages €4 trillion Euros worth of investments.
Yes, you read that correctly, that’s €4 TRILLION.
…Which is why any inquiry about the BBC’s treatment of the global warming fraud is usually met with a deafening silence.
Link at the bottom of the article appears to be broken?
[Fixed, thanks. ~dbs]
Link to BBC Science Review Submission gives a page not found error
[Fixed, thanks. ~dbs, mod.]
The CBC is even worse than BBC. Government funds a bit under half.
David Suzuki is Canada’s Al Gore, much worse than anyone at the BBC.
The link appears broken.
[Fixed, I think. Thanks. ~dbs]
Climate scepticism: The top 10
How about WUWT updates the chart in the link below with up to date facts!!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/629/629/7074601.stm
And pass it back to the BBC to see if they will update their page.
I had trouble opening the Word document. I finally got OpenOffice.org to do it. (A pox on word and all its git.) The pdf version may be found on Newberry’s site.
The link is broken, it needs %20 ‘s in place of the spaces.
[Fixed. Thank you. ~dbs, mod.]
Andrew and Tony have done an excellent job, here (with the exception of a few typos!) The key paragraphs from where I’m sitting:
The above “concept” came from futerra communications. And, from where I’m sitting, it seems to have migrated across the pond: Canada’s CBC is an equally unbalanced purveyor of “climate change” gospel.
In other arenas, here in Canada, as Donna Laframboise notes in a post today, the green activist PR machine has moved beyond merely peddling the mantra and denigrating those who disagree, to physical actions and activities which are designed to prevent those with whom they disagree from exercising their right to freedom of speech (even on a matter unrelated to “climate change”).
As Donna noted:
And speaking of echoes of Streicher and his cohorts, green activists and shutting down dissident voices, things are not so rosy in Germany these days either. On my own blog, I have noted that we need a clarion call for clarity.
From the BBC (Google):-
“Editorial guideline breaches
In 2007 it emerged that the BBC had been involved in a number of editorial guideline breaches. Mark Thompson, as BBC editor-in-chief investigated these breaches, and presented his interim report to the BBC Trust on 18 July 2007.[6] The Trust felt that the BBC’s values of accuracy and honesty had been compromised, and Thompson outlined to the Trust the actions he would take to restore confidence.
Later that day he told BBC staff, via an internal televised message,[7] that deception of the public was never acceptable. He said that he, himself, had never deceived the public – it would never have occurred to him to do so, and that he was sure that the same applied to the “overwhelming majority” of BBC staff. He also spoke on BBC News 24[8] and was interviewed by Gavin Esler for Newsnight. He stated that “from now on, if it [deceiving the public] happens we will show people the door.”[9] Staff were emailed on 19 July 2007[10] and later in the year all staff, including the Director-General undertook a Safeguarding Trust course.[11]”
Although it would appear that publishers have experienced a stranglehold for issuing such books as Climate: the Counter Consensus, written by Professor Bob Carter, it seems fairly obvious that television programmes may also be under the same cloak. I wonder why Thompson, now chairman, is really leaving the BBC next year. Could it be anything to do with his assertion above?
By the way, I recommend the aforementioned book to anyone who wishes to find out about our chaotic climate.
Sorry about the plug Anthony, but good example, yes?
[SNIP – violation of site policy – wtf@fu.com is not a valid email address. the fu.com domain is in Arlington, VA and your comment originates at The University of Reading, UK., until you use a valid email address, all of your comments will be discarded – Anthony]
We have a gifted journalist in the UK by the name of James Delingpole. He writes with vigour and great penetration on, amongst other things, climate stuff. Here is a taster from a recent post:
‘When the history of the greatest pseudoscience fraud in history -aka “Climate Change” – comes to be written, no media organisation, not even the Guardian or the New York Times, will deserve greater censure than the steaming cess pit of ecofascist bias that is the BBC. That’s because, of all the numerous MSM outlets which have been acting as the green movement’s useful idiots, the BBC is the only one which is taxpayer funded and which is required by its charter to adopt an ideologically neutral position.
How then has it managed to breach its social responsibility so frequently and flagrantly?
Thanks to the combined efforts of the great Bishop Hill and the similarly wondrous Tony Newbery at the Harmless Sky blog, we now have the most comprehensive and thoroughly damning account yet of how the BBC became such an important part of a sinister political campaign to promote climate change alarmism. ‘
Read it all here: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100063937/why-the-bbc-cannot-be-trusted-on-climate-change-the-full-story/
And rejoice that we still have journalists like him in this island over which the dismal fogs of political correctness, leftie-group-think, and spin-doctor guided PR, have thickened and spread over the years. With the BBC as one of the citadels of this stultifying and oppressive, yet hugely self-satisfied, culture.
I’m with you John. The BBC is a very sociaux/communist leaning organisation by the nature of it’s make-up and activity. It is a social network with socialist ideals. I admire The Bish’s and his colleagues stubbornness but hold out little hope of achieving anything at all. In my opinion the sooner their reputation is severely damaged the better. Their effectiveness will be much reduced and their usefulness to NGO’s and government diminished.
I suspect the BBC is going through the motions of self-appraisal for PR purposes, somewhat like UEA helping the investigators investigate it.
If so, that will backfire, just as the Climategate whitewashes backfired, with an investigation of the investigators.
Prediction: The BBC will determine that the BBC is completely unbiased.
This is just another opportunity for the ‘establishment’ to say ‘nothing to see here-move along’ and in so doing strengthen their misplaced and undeserved authority.
http://www.oldholborn.net/2010/02/bbc-and-climate-change.html
>>The man responsible for looking after the fat pensions of the boys and girls at the BBC is a climate change fanatic, and he is part of an international group of investment managers who bust a gut to invest in ‘climate change’ schemes. He’s called Peter Dunscombe, and he runs the £8.2bn corporation pension fund, advising trustees on a day-to-day basis about their investments. Mr Dunscombe, who addresses conferences about ‘ethical investments’, is also chairman of the Institutional Investment Group on Climate Change(IIGCC), which has 47 members and manages four trillion euros’ worth of investments; yes, four trillion. Their goal is to find as many ‘climate change’ investment opportunities as possible:
The IIGCC Investor Statement on Climate change was launched in October 2006. Asset owners and asset managers who signed the Statement committed to increasing their focus on climate change in their own processes and in their engagement with companies and governments
It’s a pity that I can’t rely on the BBC for objective news any longer. I wouldn’t dream of it.
Keith Battye says:
Bingo. This is it. And it also applies to all national broadcasting organizations that I know of (CBC, ABC, PBS, etc.)
It’s really quite simple: if you want to eliminate a point of view, simply paint it as “right wing” to instantly cut half of the world off from even hearing it, let alone paying attention. And before the liberals get ranting, no it doesn’t work in reverse. Media and the arts are not only in control of the left, they are the expression of the left. Movies and music are also permeated with leftist liberal idealism. There are no more closed minds than the left, ironically.
This is an important lesson to learn, because I am aware that many people think that this is about Science. It’s not. This is a propaganda war, nothing less. The hypothesis of AGW with its fear-inducing “tipping points”, ocean acidification, etc. has already been clearly and completely disproved, however the people holding the mic just have to act as if it hasn’t.
The key is, as it has always been, communication. It’s not enough to know the truth, you have to communicate it. Look at how many people misquote Palin, thinking that the crap Tina Fey was saying actually came from her. Even people who should know better are misled, because once something is out there it can’t be withdrawn.
Mark says:
November 16, 2010 at 1:09 pm
If following what the science says rather than refusing to believe any evidence that disagrees with you is ‘leftist’, then I guess most scientists are ‘leftists’ and should be thrown to the wolves, just like the tea party seem to want.
================================================
mark, you’re funny
No one in the Tea Party has ever said that about scientists.
They have called a socialist a socialist when they see it, and good for them for
doing so.
It’s about time…….
I’m getting this when I click the link…
Page Not Found
The page /storage/BBC Science review submission Final.doc could not be located on this website.
[Thank you. It’s fixed now. ~dbs]