Lord Monckton is rather upset with the producers of this show, so much that he filed a legal action for a right of reply according to Bishop Hill.
I was interviewed (captured really, they flagged me down in the conference hall foyer with no notice) by this production group at the Heartland conference last year in Chicago, giving well over an hour’s worth of an interview in which they asked the same question several times in different ways, hoping to get the answer they wanted. This is an old news interviewing trick to get that golden sound bite. I knew what they were doing, and kept giving the answers my way.
Then, they showed me the contract they wanted me to sign (no mention at the beginning before the interview) and I spent several minutes reading it, finally deciding that the contract basically amounted to me giving them all rights to my image, words, and opinion, with specific rights to edit them together in “any way they saw fit”. Yes, as I recall, that was exactly the way it was worded in the contract, and basically gave them a license to create their own alternate “Watts interview” reality as they desired. My years in television news have shown me how editing can be brutally unfair in the hands of somebody skilled, and I basically told them to “stuff it” and refused to sign the contract. They spent the next two weeks via email and phone trying to come up with contract variations to get me to sign and I still refused. The entire affair was rushed and unprofessional in my experience.
The “repeated questioning of the same topic” interview technique of these blokes was a tipoff for me that the interview was a setup. I wanted no part of it and refused to allow them legal rights over me by not signing the contract. After watching the trailer below, I’m glad I stood my ground.
Here’s the BBC video and intro text for the program (note: the BBC does not allow people outside of Britain to watch the video; some sort of cranial-rectal problem I’m told, a proxy server in the UK is needed to view it if you live elsewhere):
Filmmaker Rupert Murray takes us on a journey into the heart of climate scepticism to examine the key arguments against man-made global warming and to try to understand the people who are making them.
Do they have the evidence that we are heating up the atmosphere or are they taking a grave risk with our future by dabbling in highly complicated science they don’t fully understand? Where does the truth lie and how are we, the people, supposed to decide?
The film features Britain’s pre-eminent sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton as he tours the world broadcasting his message to the public and politicians alike. Can he convince them and Murray that there is nothing to worry about?
This is the trailer, which everyone can view:
h/t to Bishop Hill
UPDATE: James Delingpole of the Telegraph tells of his experience with this outfit:
Nine months ago, when I was at the Heartland conference in Chicago, I was approached by a louche, affable, dark-haired, public school charmer called Rupert Murray. With his friend Callum he was making a documentary about climate sceptics for the BBC and wondered if I’d like to take part.
“The BBC? Not bloody likely. You’ve come to stitch us up, haven’t you?” I said.
“Not at all,” said Murray. “Look, there’s something you need to realise. I’m an independent filmmaker, I have no big budget for this, so I’m dependent on my work being original and interesting. The very last thing the BBC wants to commission is another hatchet job on sceptics. How boring and predictable would that be?”
Very true, I thought. It really is about time the BBC examined the issue from the other side. They are a public service broadcaster, after all, not a green investment fund. (Ho ho).
Unfortunately, the ending Delingpole paints is worse that my own, be sure to read his take on it.
“are they taking a grave risk with our future by dabbling in highly complicated science they don’t fully understand? ”
You’ve got to laugh haven’t you? It’s only complicated because they can’t read a thermometer.
What has this got to do with WUWT?
BRITISH GOVERNMENT TO RETHINK DIGITAL ECONOMY ACT’S WEB BLOCKS
Illegal downloads are believed to cost the creative industries £400m a year
The British government has announced that it is to look again at plans to block websites that infringe copyright. The controversial measures formed part of its crackdown on net pirates, outlined in the Digital Economy Act (DEA).
The decision to review it follows a raft of complaints about the workability of the legislation. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has now asked Ofcom to consider the viability of blocking certain websites. “I have no problem with the principle of blocking access to websites used exclusively for facilitating illegal downloading of content,” said Mr Hunt. “But it is not clear whether the site blocking provisions in the Act could work in practice so I have asked Ofcom to address this question,” he added.
It all started when child porn sites were blocked. Then terrorists sites were blocked. After that, some sites “which facilitated criminal acts”. Further up the sunny slope, sites which “incite hatred and violence on others” were blocked. Today, it is proposed that sites that infringe copyright be blocked. Tomorrow, it may be sites proving to be the biggest thorn in the side of politicians that are blocked. Hmmm… wonder which sites they might be?
…and the British criticize China for Internet censorship!
[snip – take your insults elsewhere]
[snip – just as bad as the previous comment – tone it down]
sick and tired of the Biased BBC. Thinking of jamming their transmissions – with the aid of a shotgun.
richard verney says: February 1, 2011 at 6:23 am
“I think that we are deluding ourselves if we consider that the BBC have shot themselves in the foot”
I asked the fishmonger if he knew who Lord Monckton was … he said: who? He now knows, and we spent a good time discussing the way petrol prices are going up and he is considering whether he can keep going.
The BBC have been trying to maintain the pretence that there is only one view on the climate (the BBC’s) and they have been doing that by pretending that climate sceptics can and should be denied a voice.
The BBC have now had to admit that climate scepticism is real, alive, and worst of all: it has a spokesperson! In trying to make Monckton out to be a fool, they have instead given him the status of: “spokesperson for the sceptics” in the UK.
There is no way now, the BBC can keep Monckton off the screen! And as they say: fool me once … shame on the BBC, fool me twice … shame on Monckton!
Sorry dad. You rarely post on WUWT? so I thought I would speak up. Anthony has the media savvy to recognize a trap, as you do. But they still can get ya. The alarmists sure seem intent on quashing any dissent. Hmmmm, wonder why?
What was so bad about that comment? It was the truth. These guys are fighting really dirty Anthony, and people should know.
Ryan, that sort of comment does not help. Do NOT incite violence. Use the pen. It is mightier than the shotgun anyway.
I found the trailer to be rather uninteresting. It’s all cheesiness and dull predictability. The entire film is nothing more than an extension of the tired, old caricature of the sceptic. For most AGWers this image cannot be changed despite exposure to contrary evidence. Ironically, in precisely the same manner as their steadfast belief in catastrophic global warming.
It would not serve Rupert Murray’s preconceived view to talk to people like myself: Young, liberal, educated Albertan, recycler who shops with reusable bags, buys organic vegetables, and lives 100% off grid, using solar for electricity and wood for heat.
I believe the discerning, intelligent viewer, no matter their views on climate change, won’t get sucked in by this.
Eric Worrall says:
February 1, 2011 at 4:30 am
I suspect the show will ultimately backfire spectacularly, more so than the 10:10 video. Any educated person who watched it, even people who have never had reason to doubt AGW, will wonder why a settled scientific position needs such grossly obvious appeals to emotion, and crude video propaganda stunts.
(Bold mine)
Exactly one of the things I’ve wondered all along about the AGW concept, from how it is portrayed by “climate scientists”, how it was presented in Gore’s movie, and how the main stream media often reports about it.
There’s a reason Monckton is so prominently featured. His arguments and methods laid bare will eventually prove a net negative for those who honestly disagree with the high-probability conclusions outlined in the IPCC reports.
You can think that, Jack, but only if you’re ignorant enough think there was some process that was used to generate those “high probabilities.” They were guesses, btw, in case you’re also too ignorant to understand why this is a truth.
Mark
Peer review came up. The IPCC 2007 fourth report on climate change had 13 peer reviewed papers. Popular Technology have collated 830 peer reviewed papers all rejecting man made climate change seewww.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html.
I have felt for a long time that the sceptics are mightily naive. They are push over for talented leftwing ideologues. Mr. Watts says he didn’t sign the contract. True. But he gave them over an hour of his time even though he says he knew what they were doing.
Sceptics will have to learn how to do batle. If they don’t want to it will be their funeral.
Boudu says:
February 1, 2011 at 1:21 am
Among all the contribution to this exceptional thread, the one by Boudu is the best and probably the only expert one.
Given the exact same material I could edit a programme that would tell a totally different story. Never be told that a documentary is truth.
And what a wonderful experiment that would make in search for ‘truth’, if a professional with a different view were allowed access to the same raw material the BBC used to produce this hatchet job.
Ha! Having watched the thing on the iPlayer this afternoon, I just went to the BBC Complaints site and got a 500 Internal Error – quote, “This might be because:
* We are experiencing abnormal traffic to our network or
* the service or servers it is on is not currently available.”
Looks like a *lot* of us are doing the decent thing!
In other news, the ever-impartial Guardian is reporting that 83% of the British public still believe in “global warming as a man-made danger” – see here.
We still have work to do.
I work in the UK TV industry (on the fringes thankfully), and have experienced first hand how depressing any encounter with the BBC is. After years of hard work, a former client (an executive at an independent TV company) had a project commissioned by the BBC, put into production at great expense, then abruptly had the project pulled away and handed to another production company without explanation or compensation. His lawyers told him he had grounds to sue the BBC for the time and money he had lost, but that up against this state funded Goliath with unlimited time and finds to fight him, he would go bankrupt before he won.
Another friend worked as a producer for the BBC on a freelance contract (they never give permanent positions to those outside the ‘club’). She approached an executive there with a promising idea for a documentary she had worked long and hard on in her spare time, only to have it rejected out of hand. She left the BBC shortly after this, and several months later I saw her documentary screened, exactly as she had planned it in her brief. At no point did the BBC even have the courtesy to tell her they had made her documentary, let alone offer her a job working on it. While at the BBC she witnessed firsthand the back scratching and toadying between BBC executives and the arts / political / intellectual elite, as well as the breathtaking degree of expenses fiddling that would later become public knowledge (though overshadowed by the MPs expenses scandal and kept somewhat quiet in the MSM).
I fought the BBC when they claimed my intellectual property as their own. I won, but only because I had an equally large organisation fighting my corner.
At its higher echelons, the BBC are an insular organisation, dominated as much by the public-school, Oxbridge based ‘old boy network’ now as they were fifty years ago. They see themselves as a left-wing, socially progressive, multicultural, enlightened elite, whereas in actual fact they are, and behave like a bunch of snobbish, bullying, bourgeois, reactionary, self-serving Hampstead-centric pseudo intellectuals who simply adore the smell of their own gaseous emissions. They exist in a perpetual state of hand-wringing middle class angst and believe their ill considered, second hand opinions are valid and unassailable by virtue of having fallen from their endlessly flapping jaws. Their urban centred lifestyle leads them to fear nature and see doom in every corner of the natural world, which, but for an endless stream of propaganda from their beloved Tonka Marxist rags like the Guardian, would pass them by entirely. The internal dissonance between their self-image and reality makes them hate themselves and resent the wider public they claim to serve, and forces them further onto any passing cultural bandwagon like ‘AGW’ that, in their eyes, can set them apart from the unwashed masses.
Of course, the last paragraph is probably a grossly flawed caricature of a group of people based on my own prejudices, but apparently it’s okay to mischaracterise and smear people you disagree with now that the BBC can do it.
@Mark T
Monckton is a showman. He uses techniques that have proven effective throughout history. This has nothing to do with the science, no matter your beef about the scientific work or judgments or certainties. Monckton has crossed the very forgiving line of his “technique”, IMHO, and he does so intentionally. It will eventually cost him and those who closely associate themselves with him. No amount of bluster or threatened law suites will matter. I feel much stronger about this than the sensors will allow me to convey here.
I agree with Jack Greer, I don’t like “Lord” Monckton either. With his pompousness and trumpet blowing he makes for a perfect caricature. Screaming you are hitler youth to 20-year old hippie girls (and boys) isn’t the smartest thing to do to endear yourself to the larger public.
Reminds me of a classic Simpson’s episode where Homer is made to look bad in a ‘Rock Bottom’ TV episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvwnwBbX70k
Dramatization: May not have happened!
-J
Jack Greer says:
February 1, 2011 at 10:25 am
My comment had nothing to do with Monckton.
Mark
The BBC is the UK’s state broadcaster, and tend to broadcast a lot of state propaganda. I used to think I was clever at spotting bit’s and pieces of propaganda. I stopped watching TV a few years ago, picking and choosing what I want to read on the internet instead.
Nowdays when I catch a bit of TV at a friends, I realise how deluded I was, it’s actually packed wall-to-wall with subtle propaganda. Some of it more overt than others, like this program, but that’s really only the case if you’ve done some of your own research into AGW, most viewers in the UK probably swallowed it whole.
Hats off to Anthony , Lord Monkton and James Delingpole. If they didnt believe we were a threat the AGW proponents wouldnt waste so much time trying to run us down.
The cancer analogy used by Nurse at his hack at sceptics was fatally flawed– you can check the results of Oncologists and get opinion about thier sucess or otherwise. You cannot do the same about climate scientist. As already explained so well the tricks used by editors to misreprent viewpoints are a propoganda makers dream. It would be lovely to see a programme where AGW was put onto a quasi legal setting where both sides had equal airtime and cross examination was allowed. would be fare and very telling I suspect. You have to remember most civil court cases involve a difference of opinion between either experts or well trained legal teams, and where juries are used “lay” people are supposed to make a judgement on the facts presented to them.
Lastly I ride a motorcycle so I guess this makes this posts invalid by rendering me too stupid to express an opinion
Lord Monckton does speak the truth, perhaps not always in the manner some would like.
I prefer to look at what he says, not how he says it, or whatever techniques he uses to get his points accross. Make no mistake, he is a valuable asset to the climate skeptic/realist “cause”. The very ferocity of the attacks against him by rabid Warmistas is testament to that.