From Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.some comments on the recent scathing report on BBC’s impartiality (ho ho) when it comes to reporting climate change. He writes:
Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation has alerted us to a searing criticism of the BBC in a report by Christopher Booker and Anthony Jay titled
The BBC and Climate Change: A Triple Betrayal.
He summarizes this “betrayal” in three summary points
* First, it has betrayed its statutory obligation to be impartial, using the excuse that any dissent from the official orthodoxy was so insignificant that it should just be ignored or made to look ridiculous.
* Second, it has betrayed the principles of responsible journalism, by allowing its coverage to become so one-sided that it has too often amounted to no more than propaganda.
* Third, it has betrayed the fundamental principles of science, which relies on unrelenting scepticism towards any theory until it can be shown to provide a comprehensive explanation for the observed evidence.
Judy Curry has posted
David Whitehouse on Science Journalism
where she discusses their report among other topics. Her summary statement is
When science becomes politicized, we need journalists to be playing a watchdog role and not just parroting the words of scientists and their press releases.
I agree with her conclusion. I also would add that this politicization has permeated the leadership of professional societies including the American Geophysical Union; e.g. see
as well as funding agencies; e.g. see
US Government Funding Agencies As Gatekeepers
The press is not the only group at fault as our professional societies and funding agencies are also failing to provide balanced assessments of the science.
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From Anthony: James Delingpole weighs in with an excerpt from Booker’s piece.
Which brings us to thing I’ve been dying to write about for two weeks: Christopher Booker’s magisterial report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation on the BBC’s role in promulgating the Great Man Made Global Warming Myth. It’s brilliant.
So brilliant that I’m going to have to run its damning conclusion at considerable length. Here he is, summing up what he calls the BBC’s “three betrayals”:
The first was the BBC’s betrayal of its statutory obligation to report on the world with ‘impartially’. In its own mind it got round this by creating its own definition of the meaning of the word. The IPCC, the scientific and political establishments, Al Gore, the developers of wind turbines and heaven knows who else were all so unanimously convinced that man-made global warming was an unchallengeable fact that the BBC decreed that these were the only people who should be listened to. Anyone who dissented from this orthodoxy could be ignored as belonging to just a tiny minority of cranks, or venally corrupted hirelings of Big Oil, whose views it would be improper for the BBC to publicise.
The problem was that, outside the ‘bubble’, all sorts of things were beginning to contradict this cosy scenario. Ever more serious scientists were beginning to question the orthodox theory of what was influencing the world’s climate. It emerged ever more clearly that the projections made by over-simplistic computer models no longer matched up with the observed evidence of what was actually happening to the climate. Ever more evidence came to light to suggest that the IPCC was not the unimpeachably objective and honest scientific body it was claimed to be.
It was all this which helped to illuminate the extent of the second ‘betrayal’ in the BBC’s coverage of the story, the way it betrayed the principles of professional journalism. So committed to the cause were its journalists that, when important questions began to be raised as to whether the story was really as unarguable as it was claimed to be, their only real response was simply to dig in their toes to defend it. They could no longer step outside the ‘bubble’, as independent-minded journalists should have been able to do, to consider all these questions in their own right. They could only stay within the mindset they knew, talking only to those within the orthodoxy who could provide them with the answers they needed to fend off all these tiresome ‘deniers’ appearing from outside the ‘bubble’ to ask awkward questions – such as how genuinely scientific were the methods used to create the ‘hockey stick’ graph?
One of the impressions it is hard to avoid in reviewing the BBC’s coverage of this story is that its journalists, and those shadowy figures behind them in the BBC hierarchy, are not particularly well-informed about many of the issues they report on. This point was made as long ago as 2006 by the journalist Richard D. North, when he described his experience in attending that day-long seminar organised by Roger Harrabin, As North observed:
I was frankly appalled by the level of ignorance of the issue which the BBC people showed …I heard nothing which made me think any of them read any broadsheet newspaper coverage of the topic (except maybe the Guardian and that lazily) … it seemed to me that none of them had shown even a modicum of professional curiosity on the subject … I spent the day discussing the subject and I don’t recall anyone showing any sign of having read anything serious at all.
This may help to explain the third of the three ‘betrayals’ to which I referred at the start, the consistency with which the BBC’s coverage of this story has shown so little understanding of the basic principles of science. We have seen how again and again they have put out programmes designed to promote their cause which have contained quite rudimentary scientific errors. They have loved to wheel on front men such as Sir David Attenborough, Dr Iain Stewart or Sir Paul Nurse, claiming to speak with all the authority of being ‘a scientist’ – but who have then been shown, on matters outside their own disciplines, to be out of their depth. These people have been used to lend the prestige of ‘science’ for the purposes of what amounted to no more than clumsy exercises in propaganda.
Perhaps the most revealing example of all of this misuse of the prestige of science was that truly bizarre report produced in 2011 for the BBC Trust by Professor Jones, arguing that, far from being too biassed, the BBC’s coverage of the story should in future become even more biassed still.
The sheer Alice in Wonderland dottiness of this report might serve as a suitable epitaph on what has been one of the saddest chapters in the BBC’s history. Here is a hugely important and far-reaching issue on which for years it has been comprehensively misleading the audience from which it derives its funding. Yet the tragedy is that it seems so incapable of recognising just how badly it has failed us that there is little realistic prospect of it ever being likely to change its ways.
The one body which in theory has the power to call the BBC to account when it is failing in its journalistic and statutory responsibilities is the BBC Trust (which in 2008 succeeded the old Board of Governors). But the Trust’s present chairman Lord Patten, a former EU Commissioner and fervent Europhile, has been an unquestioning supporter of the ‘consensus’ on climate change ever since the days when he was Secretary of State for the Environment back In 1990. He has more recently described it as ‘the only really existential issue confronting the world today’ and as ‘’the biggest issue we face’.[1]
His ‘vice-chair’, Diane Coyle, married to the BBC’s Technology Editor and a former economics editor of the Independent, has similarly parroted the mantras of the orthodoxy (just as in former times, like Patten, she was a fervent supporter of the campaign for Britain to join the euro, scorning those opposed to it as being driven only by a visceral ‘anti-Europeanism and ‘Little England-ism’).
It is hardly surprising that in such hands the Trust should have both commissioned and warmly endorsed Jones’s report calling for the BBC to show even more bias than hitherto. So the BBC’s position is therefore likely to remain – until that time when the great scare over global warming may come to be looked back on as having been one of the most significant examples in history of how easily human beings can be carried away by what the author of a famous book once long ago called ‘extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds’.
I highly recommend Sir Antony Jay’s foreword too, which offers an equally brilliant ex-insider’s insight into the BBC mentality which made these betrayals possible. Perhaps I’ll find time to reprint it in another post. Not in this one, where the lofty scorn of the Booker on tip top form is more than treat enough.
Totally agree w/crosspatch. However, Ms Cox defended herself without an attorney. Extremely foolish. But the article says other attorneys have offered her their services in her appeal. And I think someone should give that attorney a hanky for his last statement so he can wipe away his crocodile tears.
All the public broadcasters TV and radio empires are shaped by the same socialist elitist mold, all are paid for by the taxpayers and all are as bad ,bent and twisted as each other.
To name a few I have had experience with while living in different parts of the world.
1: The BBC – UK
2: ABC – Australia
3: CBC – Canada
I have loved and enjoyed the privilege of living and working in all these country’s but the Public broadcasters stink with their one sided dogma.
I;m sure there are many more.
“also would add that this politicization has permeated the leadership of professional societies including the American Geophysical Union”
Unfortunately not enough people are serving notice to the societies and propagandists; more people need to quit/cancel and make certain they know why. So far I have quit/cancelled:
Scientific American
Popular Science
National Geographic
Newsweek
Cable TV
and membership in
The National Society of Professional Engineers
The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers
Al Gored says:
December 8, 2011 at 7:27 pm
PaulH says:
December 8, 2011 at 6:50 pm
“Much the same criticisms could be directed at the CBC, the government controlled Canadian equivalent of the BBC.”
Or worse since they provide Suzuki with a permanent taxpayer funded soapbox.
On the other hand, they somehow let Rex Murphy into the building and now he’s too popular among Canadians to muzzle or dump. Here’s his latest beautiful must watch heresy:
http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/The_National/Rex_Murphy/1275870718/ID=2172735930
I couldn’t agree with you more Rex Murphy is a Canadian National treasure and a straight shooter, thank god. he is the only decent even handed guy in the whole CBC TV and Radio.
He is the direct opposite of that Hypocritical doom and gloomer David Suzuki the high flying 5 million mile a year save the planet dips###t!
Sir Antony Jay is right when he says:
“if the BBC is to be paid to propagate the opinions of a liberal elite minority, it should not be allowed to dominate the national airwaves as it does today. Its voice should
be heard, but it should not be allowed to drown out the others.”
But I do not agree with his solution:
“No, what really needs changing is the size of the BBC. All we need from it is
one television channel and one speech radio station – Radio 4, in effect.”
Not quite sure whether Brits HAVE to pay for the BBC but they do for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation – which exactly replicates BBC policies on global warming – through general taxation.
In my opinion “User Pay” is the only solution. To me it is totally abhorrent that one should be forced to pay for a culture that continually propagates one sided views devoid of arguments that you would like to see presented – no matter what the size of the organisation.
I do not want the opposite as above all, to thine own self be true. If our arguments can be shown to be false so be it, we must accept the facts. But I strongly suspect that if the ABC’s (and BBC’s?) budget becomes dependent on voluntary subscription that we would soon find a balance of all views and I suspect that its size would not have to be severely cut.
However in the end, sooner or later, the truth will out and some-one who presents only one side of the argument is going to have a giant sized omelette on their face.
When you think of the people who support global warming and you realize that they object to nuclear power right there you know something is wrong with their thinking. WATTSUPWITHTHAT.COM?
Smokey says:
December 8, 2011 at 7:32 pm
Totally agree w/crosspatch. However, Ms Cox defended herself without an attorney. Extremely foolish…”
Yes foolish, but it should not have been. Judges should give lay people representing themselfs, far more legal protection and counsel. (Assuming the idea is justice, not protecting some vague nuance of the law on what is admissiable or not, etc etc etc). Instead they act like they have broken some secret club rule and willingly hand out clearly unfair rulings. This judge should have done all possible to protect the first amendment, weather it was argued or not. He should have made the arguements in his decison a good constitutional layer would have made.
The BBC is far from the only British betrayer – now a freedom of information request filed by Mr. Matthew Sinclair of the U.K. Taxpayers’ Alliance found that the British government had given Calgary-based Pembina Institute $14,300 for a March report called “Reducing Pollution, Creating Jobs” that found the Conservative government’s Economic Action Plan would have created an extra 150,000 jobs if it had invested more in green industries.
In the long-term, the report found, a shift away from fossil-fuel industries, such as the Alberta oil sands, and toward green industries would create more jobs than would be lost. Along with the report, the British high commission spent another $14,000 on a “Thought Forum” in 2009 that “highlight[ed] energy efficiency and renewable technology opportunities” and another $9,500 to help the institute host cap-and-trade discussions between Canadian environmental groups and energy companies.
This is deliberate British interference in Canada’s internal affairs. The British government are SCUM BAGS – THIS is how the Brits pay back the tens of thousands of Canadians who lost their lives defending that ignorant nation.
The report is a great read – and Sir Anthony Jay’s introduction, where he talks about his time working for the BBC, sets the scene perfectly.
As others have commented, a lot of this could be applied to other public broadcasters. It certainly fits Australia’s ABC like a glove. The mindset and the techniques used to push their line are identical. In the case of the ABC, it is not just climate ideology, but a much broader ‘environmentalist’ line which treats the pronouncements of Greenpeace, WWF et al as holy writ, and this has been the case since long before the climate issue was high on the agenda.
Along the way, they have pushed a broadly anti-capitalist and specifically anti-business agenda without a trace of shame. They have many hours of ‘nature’ and ‘lifestyle’ programs which run green Left agendas, and less than 5 hours a week of business coverage on the main TV network, for example.
The latest batch of Climategate emails was not mentioned at all until it became unavoidable, and then received a snippet on the website for a day, before sinking without trace. However, they have set up a whole portal on coal seam gas extraction, which predictably is full of errors and alarmist claims about environmental Armageddon, which they now claim to be ‘examining’ after complaints were lodged. No-one is holding their breath waiting for corrections, let alone retractions.
The scariest thing about the report is the observation that most journalists lack intellectual curiosity – not to mention being unconcerned about informing themselves on the basics of large and ongoing issues they report on. The average WUWT reader and poster would leave them for dead on both counts, and not just on climate issues. They don’t do even the most elementary research, and despite being believers in various things, don’t seem to want to know anything about them that is not served up in predigested form (such as via a press release). That is very depressing indeed.
No wonder the MSM consistently only picks upon big themes and stories after the hard work has been done by bloggers. And therefore, no wonder they are steadily losing influence and credibility as well as sales.
Talking about scientists making political waves:
http://www.straight.com/article-560591/vancouver/ndp-leadership-candidate-thomas-mulcair-backs-cap-and-trade-gains-andrew-weavers-endorsement
“(…) First up, he was flanked by Andrew Weaver, Canada research chair in climate modelling at the University of Victoria. Weaver was endorsing Mulcair’s leadership, mainly because the Outremont MP and former Quebec environment minister announced today (December 8) that he will push for a cap-and-trade system nationwide if he wins the leadership race to replace the late Jack Layton.
Weaver noted on climate change, “We’ve spent a lot of time over the years talking about the problem, and when we have leadership like this, I think it’s very important to support them, and that’s why I am here today.”
Mulcair responded, “Professor Weaver’s endorsement of my leadership campaign is one of the most important elements to date.”
Then Mulcair roundly criticized the Conservative government’s inaction on the issue, before he got down to the business at hand, outlining the ways that his plan for cap-and-trade differed from the federal Liberals’ carbon-tax proposal under Stéphane Dion’s tenure. (…)”
===
The line is crossed and has been crossed a long time ago…
How is this possible? Last time I looked Queen Elizabeth II was still officially head of state in Canada.
Yes and those who want a cap n’ trade are in purely for the $$’s. Nothing to do with saving the environment and climate change at all.
Deliberate British interference in Canada’s internal affairs? Queen Elizabeth II like in Australia is the Queen of Canada. She has no influence on any countries internal affairs, I have a letter from her to prove it. When she visits the union jack is beside the maple leaf out of respect. Gosh after Prince Phillips announcement, wind mills were a waste of time and money and ineffective, maybe that’s what they mean. Especially as one blew up during a savage storm in Scotland recently.
crosspatch says:
December 8, 2011 at 8:58 pm
This is deliberate British interference in Canada’s internal affairs.
How is this possible? Last time I looked Queen Elizabeth II was still officially head of state in
Canada.
—————
This has nothing to do with the Queen – she isn’t that stupid – the Cameron government IS that dumb.
Australia (ABC), Britain (BBC) and Canada (CBC).
They all have two things in common.
1. They are all corporations.
2. They are all broadcasters.
Now think it over. What in a primitive society was broadcasting?
Well, that’s where they tried to stop volcanoes from erupting by throwing broads into them. Despite there being no evidence that it worked, they just figured they weren’t throwing enough broads in and ramped it up.
Its all gone high tech now of course, everything is “virtual”, even money is virtual, and climate science, well that’s just virtual broadcasting…
I haven’t had a chance to read the whole report as yet, but a bit about an email exchange concerning how an interview in the proposed BBC documentary Meltdown: A Global Warming Journey (2006) was a complete setup with the interviewer (Paul Rose, a scientist) and interviewee simply performing acting roles, is at the same time scandalous and hilarious:
Christopher Booker is the UKs outstanding investigative reporter – sheer brilliance and a brilliant report.
Mustn’t forget James Delingpole, who is coming along brilliantly.
Great report, filled in some gaps I didn’t know about and written with such skill the events over the time span flowed and didn’t become a jumbled mess of the spaghetti graph.
The mystery as to why the BBC should have made this the main news of the day
only deepened when it emerged that Field was not a climate scientist at all, but
a professor of biology in an ecology department. To promote its cause, the BBC
website even posted a video explaining how global warming would be made
much worse than forecast by ‘negative feedback’. ‘Negative feedback’, of
course, reduces temperatures rather than raising them. This elementary howler
inspired such a gale of derision from Watts Up With That that the BBC had to pull
hurriedly the video off its website.
Now, if only he’d dared to go against the consensus and split his infinitives..
The BBC is deeply cunning. For years it has been loathed by UK conservatives for its relentless Leftiness. So when Labour was in power, the BBCs occasionally mild criticisms of that shameful epoch in our island story were met with cries of “Fascists” etc from the Labour Party. So the BBC, with a smirk, could say, “see, all sides hate us, proves we’re neutral after all, doesn’t it?” Um, well, no actually.
Just technically, media once having learned about false equivalence first got it right, not to ‘invite and hear any crank’, then got it wrong again when ruling out that also the mainstream can turn out to have been the crank.
A second baby in the climate bathwater other than environment: objectivity.
Throughout the 1990s the BBC timed Global Warming stories to coincide with spells or warm or hot weather. In commercial radio this is called an ‘ice-cream’ package, the ad is only aired when the temperature goes above an agreed figure.
Given the fact that there must be archives for say Radio 1…and of course central london Temp records…it would be fascinating to run them side by side and see if there was a conspiracy to further ‘the Cause’.
My recollection was that the placement of Warmist Scare stories was blatant and unsubtle.
When the weather was cool and wet (ie most of the time) there was never a peep about global warming.
Global Warming sold like Icecream to the gullible masses…that’s what first alerted me to the Fraud.
USA Citizens! You are fortunate that the BBC was not in existence when you were trying to establish your right to Independence. The BBC has adopted such a biased position on Scotland’s that it has become subject to widespread ridicule throughout Scotland.
http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/contact-us?cid=5
I have a friend, a former client of mine (Director of the Dallas Office of Environmental Quality) who was working on an issue related to air control who got a call from BBC World News Service to ask her what she thought was going to be some questions related to the subject she was working on. She was rather put off by the person who called her, because the person seemed more interested in asking questions that advanced the person’s agenda, rather than asking questions about the subject my client knew about. She ended up cutting the interview short rather than going off on a rabbit trail.
This has been something I have known about the BBC for a long time. They have an agenda, and it is not an agenda to report on what is going on in the world. It makes me question whether the BBC is trustworthy on ANY issue of public importance, much less AGW.
Biased Broadcasting Cabal…. to go with the others here.
I have just received a reply to my complaint to the BBC about the alarmist and biased program Frozen Planet, the final episode. Their reply was the usual, We always use best material with accurate non biased reporting. But I was allowed to reply, which I did with some facts from your excellent site. These facts will fall on deaf ears.