David Rose of the Mail on Sunday tears the BBC a new one, thanks to an “amateur climate blogger”.
- Pensioner forces BBC to lift veil on 2006 eco-seminar to top executives
- Papers reveal influence of top green campaigners including Greenpeace
- Then-head of news Helen Boaden said it impacted a ‘broad range of output’
- Yet BBC has spent more than £20,000 in legal fees trying to keep it secret
The BBC has spent tens of thousands of pounds over six years trying to keep secret an extraordinary ‘eco’ conference which has shaped its coverage of global warming, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The controversial seminar was run by a body set up by the BBC’s own environment analyst Roger Harrabin and funded via a £67,000 grant from the then Labour government, which hoped to see its ‘line’ on climate change and other Third World issues promoted in BBC reporting.
At the event, in 2006, green activists and scientists – one of whom believes climate change is a bigger danger than global nuclear war – lectured 28 of the Corporation’s most senior executives.
Then director of television Jana Bennett opened the seminar by telling the executives to ask themselves: ‘How do you plan and run a city that is going to be submerged?’ And she asked them to consider if climate change laboratories might offer material for a thriller.
A lobby group with close links to green campaigners, the International Broadcasting Trust (IBT), helped to arrange government funding for both the climate seminar and other BBC seminars run by Mr Harrabin – one of which was attended by then Labour Cabinet Minister Hilary Benn.
Applying for money from Mr Benn’s Department for International Development (DFID), the IBT promised Ministers the seminars would influence programme content for years to come.
The BBC began its long legal battle to keep details of the conference secret after an amateur climate blogger spotted a passing reference to it in an official report.
Tony Newbery, 69, from North Wales, asked for further disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. The BBC’s resistance to revealing anything about its funding and the names of those present led to a protracted struggle in the Information Tribunal. The BBC has admitted it has spent more than £20,000 on barristers’ fees. However, the full cost of their legal battle is understood to be much higher.
=============================================================
Related:
BREAKING: The ‘secret’ list of the BBC 28 is now public – let’s call it ‘TwentyEightGate’
Thanks to Maurizio for that revelation.
=============================================================
Tony Newbery writes:
What is clear in the Mail on Sunday report is that funding for the 2006 BBC climate change seminar came from a government department. Also that the funds were channelled through environmental lobbyists who were organising the seminar. And it is possible that the government department that provided the funds had some input about the topics selected for the seminars. Lord Hall, as the man who encouraged Roger Harrabin to set up the seminar programme, features in this story too. However since his return to the BBC he has thrown some interesting light on the matter, contradicting just about everything that the BBC has claimed about the seminar previously. –Tony Newbery, Harmless Sky, 12 January 2014
There is more at Harmless Sky, including links to the FOI release that nails the BBC.
===========================================================
The new attention on the BBC’s 28gate seminar has been prompted by disclosure of documents showing how the [UK Government’s] Department for International Development responded to a funding request for funding from the International Broadcasting Trust a body that lobbies broadcasters on behalf of green NGOs. What we have, in essence, appears to be government paying for subversion of the state broadcaster. –Andrew Montford, Bishop Hill, 12 January 2014
=============================================================
UPDATE: from comments.
Roger Harrabin was on the advisory board of the Tyndall centre, at the same time his CMEP was being funded by Prof Mike Hulme (seminar attendee) Tyndall to organise the seminars.
I’m still to curious to know whether he had stepped down or not from Tyndall , when the January 26th, 2006 seminar happened.
According to wayback machine,
Roger Harrabin was on the Tyndall Advisory (alongside Bill Hare Greenpeace) board in August 2005, (after this date, the Tyndall website changed and advisory board info was no longer available, via wayback)
the conflict of interest for the BBC seems huge, given:
Prof Mike Hulme (climategate 2 email):
“Did anyone hear Stott vs. Houghton on Today, radio 4 this morning? Woeful stuff really. This is one reason why Tyndall is sponsoring the Cambridge Media/Environment Programme to starve this type of reporting at source.” (email 2496)
Both Harrabin and Smith seemed to have thought that the CMEP seminars werevery succesful in persuading the BBC to change it stance and policies in the reporting of ‘climate change’ as described by Dr Joe Smith’s in his OU profile: (h/t DAvid Holland)
“The seminars have been publicly credited with catalysing significant changes in the tone and content of BBC outputs across platforms and with leading directly to specific and major innovations in programming,” – Dr Joe Smith
“It has had a major impact on the willingness of the BBC to raise these issues for discussion. Joe Smith and I are now wondering whether we can help other journalists to perform a similar role in countries round the world” – Roger Harrabin
We wrote about the above at Watts Up With That, when climategate 2 broke, quotes from & more detail here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/27/climategate-2-impartiality-at-the-bbc/
Congratulations to Tony, in finally getting all the information..
Links to all the docs on his blog – The Harmless Sky
I was curious as to the input of the Church of England. It is unusual for the BBC to be so religious.
So I Googled Claire Foster. She now seems to be Claire Foster-Gilbert. From Cater&Co – the Social Kinetic – she is described as one of their experts.
She is also described as “a member of the 10 Downing Street coalition on climate change.”
http://www.thesocialkinetic.com/claire-foster-gilbert/13-our-experts/67-our-experts-claire-foster-gilbert?tmpl=component
David Harrington says:
January 12, 2014 at 6:53 am
To be fair to the BBC 20K does not buy you very much barrister and solicitor time in the UK.
No David it doesn’t but I’m unsure whether that is external advice or their internal solicitors office/ legal department.
Tony Newbery should be knighted.
The disorder was contagious and infected many others:
NYT
Science
Nature
National Geo
Scientific American
The Weather Channel
CBC here in Canadia
etc etc, ad nauseam
dp says:
January 12, 2014 at 8:38 am
You wouldn’t see carbon trading as a separate investment. At the moment there are a number of trading units that have closed due to poor results.
What the UK and the rest of europe needs is a UKIP with a McArthor element. Root out all the communists, sell the BBC, ban all contributions via goverment to greenies and then execute the EU commissioners. There is one guillotine left in the Paris museum. We can start with that and build some more as needed. 🙂
McArthey? McArthor ?
While I think Tony is to be congratulated for his determined efforts to get his information publicised, nothing will happen as far as the UK press is concerned. You will certainly not get any objective reporting from Guardian or Independent, and the Telegraph and Mail keep blowing hot and cold over the climate issue, there is no sustained reporting or challenge to the warmest views. The Express is too tied up with anti EU to get anything out of them. The TV News is even worse. Along with the BBC, Sky and ITV are in the pay of WWF and Save the Children, you only have to see all their adverts to know they are a clear revenue stream, and if they are giving this free then they are clearly supporting the NGO warmest organisations. ITV Meridian News even proudly displays a windmill on their news leader.
I really would like to see something change but I doubt it will until the whole AGW farce collapses, and then as far as the press is concerned they will let it die with no challenge to the money wasted. They are now truly appalling, which is probably due to the fact they have got rid of all their investigative journalists and rely on so called graduate journalists and churnalism because that is cheaper.
DirkH says:
January 12, 2014 at 8:49 am
Caz Jones says:
January 12, 2014 at 8:37 am
“They even receive funding from the EU to push the agenda.”
From the article:
“The news prompted MPs to raise questions about the BBC’s impartiality when its journalists report on events in the EU. ”
Ya don’t say! That’s like saying CNN is working for the CIA! I’m cracking myself up!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You would crack up even more if you were ever to watch a BBC spokesperson assuring us they are a totally unbiased organisation. Unfortunately, some believe them.
Bravo Tony Newbery – Well done Sir !
More here:
http://WWW.THEGWPF.ORG/TONY-NEWBERY-BBCS-DISCLOSED-FOI-DOCUMENTS/
TONY NEWBERY: THE BBC’S DISCLOSED FOI DOCUMENTS
Date: 12/01/14
Tony Newbery, Harmless Sky
The article said the legal costs were ‘more than’ £20,000. As far as I recall from reports, the BBC had a number of legal advisors at the FOI hearing, they probably thought it was worth it to stop one UK pensioner proving they were a propaganda organisation for green scare stories about global warming.
… and at Tony Newbury’s site Harmless Sky
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/~newbery1/blog/
“I said it before, I’ll say it again, We need a list of discredited reporters and journalists who either willfully or unwillingly allowed themselves to be programmed by the greens.
They aren’t journalists, they are public relations people.”
The list would be easier to compile, and much shorter, if you asked for a list of reporters both unbiased(or at least cognizant of their biases) and immune from such programming…
The best lies your tax money can buy to be broadcast to you by paid liars.
Now reported on the Telegraph website too:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/10566952/Row-over-BBC-climate-change-conference-cover-up.html
oops
The best lies your tax money can buy to be broadcast to you via your tax money and by on air paid liars smirking at you as they do the lying.
Shocked, shocked I tell you that the BBC, CBC, ABC are nothing but leftist political hot houses..
Global warming is a political issue with no real data to support it.. Therefor our democratic election laws have been broken.. They have forced people to make donations to a political cause without their consent..
Robin, this problem I do not have but you may have been on obscure sites. Update your Java. Next run three antimalware programs on your computer, and use the option of system reset to an earlier date. Usually this works unless you are infected by the latest version of the Interpol virus. In that case you could not have written a message. Success!
David Harrington
“To be fair to the BBC 20K does not buy you very much barrister and solicitor time in the UK.”
In fact the sum is derisory when compared with the £333,000 in legal fees which the BBC was prepared to spend to protect their cover-up of a report on another of their favourite biases.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balen_Report
But in 2011, when that case was finally settled in the Supreme Court after the BBC had lost in the House of Lords, the Jimmy Saville case had not yet broken and there were still some British judges who were prepared to believe in the integrity of the BBC.
Now then, now then, hows about that then guys an’ gals?
The BBC charter can be obtained here:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/about/how_we_govern/charter.pdf
Some excerpts:
ELIZABETH THE SECOND by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland and of Our other Realms and Territories Queen, Head
of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith:
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, GREETING!
…
NOW KNOW YE that We by Our Prerogative Royal and of Our especial grace,
certain knowledge and mere motion do by this Our Charter for Us, Our Heirs and
Successors will, ordain and declare as follows:
…
(1) The BBC shall be independent in all matters concerning the content of its output, the
times and manner in which this is supplied, and in the management of its affairs.
Isn’t it time we stopped concentrating on the minutae if climate change and broadcast the ‘whole’ story in one easy-to-understand package? Club of Rome, UN, Article 21, Climate Gate, the Pause, IPCC ‘errors’ and successive exposure articles on the ‘fraud’ this all encompasses?
We’re past the point of having to dig into each and every ‘fact’ that is presented for public consumption – there is already more than enough evidence, properly presented, to expose the whole AGW political structure as the scam that ‘we’ know it is in one short, to-the-point article that can, and should, be propagated across the internet and, hopefully picked up by the MSM.
phlogiston says on January 12, 2014 at 10:24 am
The BBC charter can be obtained here:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/about/how_we_govern/charter.pdf
Some excerpts:
(1) The BBC shall be independent in all matters concerning the content of its output, the
times and manner in which this is supplied, and in the management of its affairs.
_________
Such a major breach of the BBC Charter suggests that they must dismiss senior management and start over…
We have the same problem with eh CBC in Canada. They have become a propaganda tool of the political Left and cannot be trusted to report the facts.
Yes, funny why you need to do this sort of thing when you have fact, data, and peer reviewed science on your side……. The amount of hubris displayed by this crowd is absolutely stunning.
Robin: could be your browser is not displaying the WUWT html in the way it was written to be displayed.
This can be because your browser is out of date, you have changed settings on certain aspects of browser display, you have javascript disabled or it is out of date.
I use Firefox as it is more compliant with stricter markup standards now being used more and more. It is free and seems to do better than many of the other browsers AND it’s not Google OR M$.
YMMV
The BBC is not an honest broker. They have officially decided to be a far-left propaganda mouth piece. A very far cry from the honorable and brave BBC during WWII.