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.
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Related:
BREAKING: The ‘secret’ list of the BBC 28 is now public – let’s call it ‘TwentyEightGate’
Thanks to Maurizio for that revelation.
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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
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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
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Newsbusters.org has a link to David Rose’s story and Tony Newbury’s blog in their reporting of the BBC being taught what to say about CAGW.
The BBC has sunk lower and lower. It has been obvious for a long time that the climate/global warming output has been outragiously biased. They have peddled and invented scare after scare. Sadly this is part of a wider picture of bias and hidden agendas. The BBC championed the pro EU agenda and the pro-Euro brigade. The BBC takes a leftish slant on most social issues and [some of] its leading lights like Andrew Marr have publicly reconised this fact. Who writes their script and how can these meta-narratives be broken down. Well done Tony Newberry. WE all owe you! The juggernaut of AGW will only be stoppped when these bastions of propaganda are truly breached and the other side gets its voice heard.
The inevitable end result of any state funded media organization is to push the interest of the state. This should come as a surprise to no one.
Mark
DirkH
From guess who?
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=70
May I ask that any UK BBC licence payers visit Tony Newberry’s blog:
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=703#comment-203344
and emails the House of Commons Culture Media and Sport Select Committee as he suggests regarding an independent enquiry into the BBC Editorial Policy.
If Tony can spend considerable time and effort submitting the FOI and deal with all the usual frustrations and prevarication arising from this process then this is the least we can do.
Thank you.
DirkH
There is also for the 11 degrees http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4210629.stm
and the error http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4923248.stm
Mark T says:
January 12, 2014 at 11:08 am
The inevitable end result of any state funded media organization is to push the interest of the state. This should come as a surprise to no one.
Mark
Perfeito….
http://i1195.photobucket.com/albums/aa391/MAFILI/035709202-EX00_zpsad2528e3.jpg
In another thread someone coined the term “Presstitutes”…..seems to apply in spades here….
As far as the Church of England being involved (which I questioned in the original thread about this a while back), the Queen of England is the head of the church. When you consider that her
husband, Prince Phillip, considers humans to be a virus on the earth (or something like that),
and her son Charles (I think England’s answer to California’s governor moonbeam) is about
as green as can be, it’s no surprise that the Church of England would be involved with
supposed “climate problems”…..if only they were more involved with their own problems, and
other, REAL, problems….
Nothing to see here – its the establishment babysitters. Nothing changed, nothing will change, the BBC will stick to their global warming script as normal. But what has changed before this story broke is the people themselves – the people no longer believe the AGW scam. Even the might of the MSM could not and cannot raise this dead cow! The MSM no longer matters – the internet has surpassed their ability to shape minds. This site alone serves millions – my case entirely!
Re; Christopher says: at 8:41 am
I listened to the podcast you linked to, astonishing! The professor who produced the 50 – 200 million climate refugees by 2010 figure was funded by the UN and all but admitted he came up with the figure ‘to scare people’. I can only think he was so candid because it was the BBC who were interviewing him.
Amazing time lag.
Or what passes for journalism today.
The presstitutes who inhabit our main stream media, have lied to us for years.
This tool, the www, has broken their lock on publicity.
Leaving them rather exposed as the hacks they are.
Their selective blindness has been apparent for years but now we have this tool to check and see what the MSM has failed to report.Like the actual facts.
Classic big protest as covered by CBC= same 30 people filmed from 100 angles.
Frank Zappa called this state of affairs years ago, a cute little number called;”I am the Slime”.
The opening line is our media.. Vile and pernicious, obsessed and deranged…
Sounds like CNN, CBC, BBC to me.
In addition to the points raised against this by commenters upthread, there’s this: The stock market value of their green investments has likely fallen by at least 75% over the past five years or so. This could well have had the effect of removing that bunch from their “top 100” (by market value) list.
The bbc truly thinks that they are doing the right thing by “savigng the planet”.
The right thing for them is to report the facts from all sides. If they do not they themselves are corrupt. Media must be kept at arm’s length from government because if power is not distributed then corruption will occur as power corrupts.
Meanwhile in Australia the government-owned ABC is a clone of the BBC with its opinionated “news”. It is finally coming under some criticism from the new government for its leftist reporting, with not one conservative reporter on its payroll.
Hasn’t it been an open secret for decades that to assuage perceived guilt we must “invest in the planet/future”? Rich people are just as dumb as the rest of of us, statistically, possibly dumber due to rent-seekers feeding them feelings of responsibility.
@Clive
Don’t you think that there must have been an equally strange and funded meeting for the top CBC news-shapers? The CBC is unremitting in its promotion of CAGW and can only reflect a rigid policy that it must be so. How do we find out when and where this took place, and who attended?
Corrections to my last comment. The climate refugee figures should have been 50 million by 2010 and 200 million in the next few decades. It wasn’t the professor who produced the figure (professor Norman Myers) who admitted he came up with the figure to scare people, it was another scientist who suggested that. What prof Myers said when challenged about the accuracy of the climate refugee figure was;
“All science is a bit iffy”
Here is a link to the article:
http://oppenheimer.mcgill.ca/How-many-climate-migrants-will
Crispin in Waterloo
I’d say any network who hires Suzuki (CBC) is into AGW up to the tip of their hair on their head.
Delingpole is on the case
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100254064/how-the-blair-government-paid-for-the-subversion-of-our-state-broadcaster/
Irony anyone?
http://www.mediareform.org.uk/blog/media-now-just-another-word-control-john-pilgers-today-programme-statement
Robin says:
DirkH says:
M Courtney says:
Mindert Eiting says:
OT – on the subject of screen invasion – and may be of interest to Anthony & the mods?
The problem may not be a virus, bad browser settings etc. It might be the result of advertiser hijacking.
Around 19th December, I had a problem with advertising on WUWT messing up the display, eg after an iiNet (Oz ISP) advert displayed, nothing else was displayed.
I contacted WordPress, suggesting that one at least of their advertiser inserts had a bug in it.
H/t to WordPress. They came back promptly with this advice:
“We actually aren’t running ads from iinet at the moment. Some ISPs actually “hijack” ad areas to run their own ads, this is especially true of low cost ISPs and some with rather shady business dealings. Considering that your ISP is iinet, I’d suspect this may be the case.”
iiNet are currently (but not for much longer) my ISP so in my case it may be easy for them. On the other hand, they may be innocent and it could be their advertising agent.
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Maybe slightly off-topic but it seems to me that the MSM have created a bubble of fear and expectation that is not being borne out by reality.There has been no increase in global temperatures for seventeen years. The population have been told with authority and 97% consensus that the climate is changing irrevocably and to the detriment of humankind and the Earth. Meanwihle the weather is doing its normal variations.
Like the mentality of the ” South Sea Bubble” , ” Tulipomania” or the 1920’s ( and 1980’s) stock market gains there is only one outcome ( i.e. perpetually rising prices). Anyone who does not believe this is a fool and will lose out. In all these previous bubbles the rich elite were involved to make what they saw as sure money.
Like all bubbles it will collapse suddenly. I don’t think we are at that point yet but the bubble is beginning to quiver. Turneygate is not quite the turning point.
Be careful and don’t get crushed in the rush for the exits as the governments and their cronies start to deny complicity. Even the Met Office is beginning not to link all bad weather to climate change. There will be scapegoats thrown to the wolves .The real villains will get away. And they won’t return their ill-gotten gains.
Towards the start of the Vietnam War , and I honour the gallantry and sacrifice of the American , and Vietnamese peoples, in 1962/3 it was clear to informed frontline advisors that the war was unwinnable. However McNamara with his statistics and LBJ with his egomania would not see this and through their dogma continued with a policy that resulted in the unnecessary deaths, maimings and traumas. Our current governments and their tame broadcasters with their “green” policies are inflicting death( hypothermia), hardship and unnecessary fear. It will take a Nixon, for all his faults, to get us all out of this mire.
Sasha – Thanks for the info above, but frankly writing to the BBC or the Trust is a total waste of time. The whole organisation is rotten to the core and I really believe do not understand why people like us get aggrieved at what they do. They are convinced they are right and as many here and at other blogs have found one just gets the usual tosh back saying they are perfect.
Tony Newberry (who has had a lot of practice in this area) suggests instead one should write/email to the House of Commons Culture Media and Sport Select Committee (cmscom@parliament.uk) suggesting they set up an independent enquiry into the whole debacle.
Read what Tony has to say http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=703
johnbuk, complaining to he BBC will probably achieve nothing. Agreed.
But it is not a waste of time! Note use of exclamation mark.
It allows the BBC to honourably consider their position.
As the BBC is a corporate entity anything that pushes the corporation’s anti-bias [wing] forward will help in the internal politics.
And if they still refuse to allow all voices to be heard then their punishment in the court of public opinion will be adjusted accordingly.
But, yes, complaining to the politicians may help – as well (I suppose).