Story submitted by Eric Worrall.
The BBC, the UK Government Broadcaster, has banned former Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Lawson from appearing on BBC programmes to talk about climate change.
According to a spokesman for the BBC, a series of complaints about an interview in which Lord Lawson expressed climate skepticism, led to a ruling in favour of the complainants by the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Board.
“This ruling found a false balance was created in that the item implied Lord Lawson’s views on climate science were on the same footing as those of Sir Brian Hoskins.”
However, this is not the first time the BBC has gagged unfashionable views.
Sir Winston Churchill, the WW2 leader of Britain, openly expressed the opinion that his views on NAZI Germany were gagged by the BBC, because his concerns about Germany were not what the BBC wanted the British people to hear.
History suggests the tactic will backfire:
According to the article on Churchill’s “gagging” by the BBC;
“There is no written evidence that Churchill asked the BBC for the opportunity to speak out against appeasement. However, he did complain to a young BBC producer who visited him on the day after Chamberlain returned home from Munich. A memo records their meeting. They spent hours discussing the Nazi threat and “Churchill complained that he had been very badly treated… and that he was always muzzled by the BBC”.
The BBC producer who tried to reassure Churchill about BBC bias was Guy Burgess. Burgess was the man who would later become Britain’s most infamous traitor, when he defected to Moscow with fellow spy Donald Maclean.
Story Title: BBC Bans Lord Lawson for Climate Skepticism
One line summary of story: A previous gagging led to disaster
h/t to Jo Nova
Throughout history, intelligent people understood that enlightenment can only be obtained when freedom of thought and speech are sacrosanct.
BBC’s censorship of CAGW skeptics is not to protect the truth, but rather to hide their ignorance and protect their various political and social agendas.
The CAGW scam is in its death throes, and the only way to keep it alive is to limit skeptics’ freedom of thought and speech that dare expose and question its conclusions.
However, the more CAGW advocates try to suppress free speech, the more desperate they appear and the less plausible the CAGW hypothesis becomes.
I’m actually encouraged to see the BBC’s feeble attempts to shutdown the CAGW debate, because it only shows their anxiety is increasing and that the CAGW hypothesis is not the “settled science” they claim it to be.
The writer Chistopher Hitchens said it best, “My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my @ur momisugly$$#!.”
The original storey, by Lawson, at the Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2685405/Ive-banned-BBC-Ex-Chancellor-Lord-Lawson-passionate-climate-change-sceptic-accuses-BBC-bosses-silencing-debate-global-warming.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490
About a week after the Lawson appearance that sparked this, the ‘Social Anthropologist’ Christiana Figueres was on the same program. Her assertion that the exceptionally wet winter in the UK was a result of climate change was not challenged, despite it contradicting the views of mainstream climate scientists. That the BBC cannot be trusted to implement it’s own guidelines even-handedly clearly demonstrates how much their ‘balance’ is worth.
The BBC is fast becoming a bad joke in the UK. Just read the stories concerning Jimmy Saville & Stuart Hall, the BBC’s reputation is in tatters and IMHO will only sink further when the people learn about its biases.
Bishop Hill and Tony Newberrry have worked hard at exsposing how the BBC has become infiltrated by the Greens. This essay that can be brought here is well worth a read:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/propagandabureau/
Colour me disgusted by our national broadcaster.
@ur momisugly Greg Goodman
No the BBC spelled his name correctly
He is Chit Chong, the “GREEN PARTY POLITICIAN”
– click my name to find his Green Party Website c.v.
He has also a vested interest commercial insulation business
which relies upon UK Government and Local Authority “Green”
grant aid, to generate much of its customer demand.
Obviously he perceived that Lord Lawson had threatened his position.
His complaint had NOTHING to do with the veracity or otherwise, of
what Lord Lawson has said in the programme. He simply wanted
the BBC to protect and promote his business, which is …..
www(dot)dorsetdraughtproofing(dot)co(dot)uk
Hmmm.
The BBC and the BBC Trust are just self serving jokes. The BBC gets £3,500,000,000 of public money every year and treats its viewers like idiots.
An interesting point about Burgess, during the period Winston Churchill claimed he was being gagged by the BBC, the Soviets were allies of NAZI Germany, so it is possible the Soviet spy Burgess was using whatever influence he had within the BBC, to provide at least some assistance to the Germans.
The Soviets and NAZIs didn’t fall out until Germany’s surprise attack in June 1941, Operation Barbarossa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa
The BBC has been a propaganda machine for years-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2266188/David-Bellamy-The-BBC-froze-I-dont-believe-global-warming.html
http://inquiringminds.cc/the-bbc-became-a-propaganda-machine-for-climate-change-zealots-says-peter-sissons%E2%80%A6-and-i-was-treated-as-a-lunatic-for-daring-to-dissent
& Professor Steve (snail man) Jones on BBC‘impartiality’ !!!
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-sceptics-get-too-much-airtime-bbc-told-2317718.html
Man Bearpig, yes it would be v interesting to know exactly how many complaints and more, whether the complaints were from ‘outraged citizens’ or activists posing as outraged citizens. The Left has a lot of form, in deviously presenting its bonkers views as ‘normal’.
Not only does the BBC get £3.5 billion in an imposed tax on citizens but it also receives £6.0 million from the E.C which explains its support for this appalling undemocratic institution.
‘Village Idiot’
It may have escaped your notice but it is indubitably true that the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Guardian, the Independent, which represent pretty much every political opinion under the sun are all scrupulously meticulous in censoring anything that doesn’t follow their desired political line.
The BBC is just like all the rest of them.
This is just the latest stage in the BBC’s propaganda campaign. The previous stage was where the two sides of the interview were “climate scientists” and non-scientists. That gave the BBC the opportunity to say that people who understood the science supported CAGW while non-scientists didn’t know what they were talking about and could be ignored. Then people like Lawson showed that they had a good understanding of the real science, so now they have to disappear from the “debate”.
“The BBC is looking like a self perpetuating oligarchy.”
That my friend is a phrase that I will be more than happy to use on a regular basis, with your permission! +100
The fact of the matter is that if sceptics are so wrong, then let them be heard and held to account. Unfortunately, the braying of warmists has reached such levels of ridicule that they cannot stand even the mildest alternative view, without danger of toppling into pile of dung they came from.
Rhys Jaggar – you are right – the BBC is just like the rest of them (ie our national newspapers) in exhibiting censorship.
However, there is a big difference. We can choose which newspaper we buy, whereas we are forced to pay for the BBC if we want to watch ANY live TV.
Because of this, the BBC has enshrined in its charter a statement stating that it must behave in an impartial manner.
The BBC is clearly breaking its charter on a daily basis and we are constantly fed, implicitly as well as explicitly, the global warming propaganda within it programs, including news programs.
Nylo says:
July 9, 2014 at 11:11 pm
According to a spokesman for the BBC, a series of complaints about an interview in which Lord Lawson expressed climate skepticism, led to a ruling in favour of the complainants by the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Board.
There are many ways of expressing climate skepticism. There are the sky dragons, for example. Therefore, without watching the interview, I would prefer not to say a thing regarding whether the complainants were right or wrong.
Well here is the transcript
thegwpf.org/Hoskins-vs-lawson-the-climate-debate-the-bbc-wants-to-censor
Now you can decide if the Green Party has the right to demand Lord Lawson is censored by the BBC
I disagree. Are you watching the same BBC that I am? They recently scraped the bottom of the barrel to find enough sceptics for news stories, everybody got air time. At least Lawson is telegenic, they won’t be letting him go like they did David Bellamy. Scientists do not generally make good TV fodder, the BBC learnt that when they put Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer of Penicillin, in front of a camera. Everybody was dashing about looking for the clockwork key to wind him up a bit in the hope he would finish at least one remark before they had to run the credits. Mentioning no names one of the climate sceptic spokespeople came across as distinctly dotty when you saw him in the flesh, one seemed inarticulate, vaguely paranoid and one had a distinct flavour of Sheldon Cooper. I do not believe they will want to lose Lawson.
As soon as there is ‘gagging’ or censorship then the red warning light should go on with flashing ‘danger!!’ DANGER!!!! The rest will be history.
Robin Hewitt:
Congratulations on your post at July 10, 2014 at 1:39 am which is an example of exceptionally good concern trolling.
It concludes saying
What you claim to “believe” the BBC will or will not do has no relevance.
This thread is about what HAS done; i.e. “The BBC, the UK Government Broadcaster, has banned former Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Lawson from appearing on BBC programmes to talk about climate change.”
Richard
Natalie Bennett is the leader of the UK Green party. Like Lord Lawson she doesn’t have a climate science qualification either, nor does her predecessor Caroline Lucas. Yet both ladies have enjoyed (and will no doubt continue to enjoy) extensive BBC coverage of their views relating to almost all-things climate change.
It’s pure, political partisanship from the BBC, who are clearly afraid of the impact Lawson and his GWPF are having. Hence, rather than allow him to debate, they simply deny him airtime.
If there’s any justice the Streisand Effect will bite them on the arse.
Fraser Steel-
‘As you have pointed out, Lord Lawson’s views are not supported by the evidence from computer modelling and scientific research and I don’t believe this was made sufficiently clear to the audience.’
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2014/jun/26/commonsense-prevails-as-bbc-upholds-today-programme-climate-complaint
Now you know the real reason – computer models provide evidence of global warming.
BBC4 repeated the Horizon: Global Weirding last night where scientists presented as a fact the link between ‘extreme oscillations’ in the weather without a health warning that the ipcc consensus is that there is best a low confidence in a link between extreme weather events and climate change.
I have just submitted the following complaint:
============================================
The Horizon program presented as a fact the connection between global warming of ‘Nearly 1C’ and ‘extreme oscillations’ in the weather. This is not a view supported by either the Met Office or the IPCCThe scientific consensus is as given by the IPCC is that at best there is a weak link between weather events and global warming. Due to lack of space I cannot post all the quotes from IPCC AR5 that fail to support this but her is a sample:
“Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin”
“In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale”
“In summary, there is low confidence in observed trends in small-scale severe weather phenomena such as hail and thunderstorms because of historical data inhomogeneities and inadequacies in monitoring systems”
“In summary, the current assessment concludes that there is not enough evidence at present to suggest more than low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the middle of the 20th century due to lack of direct observations, geographical inconsistencies in the trends, and dependencies of inferred trends on the index choice.”
=====================================================
Unfortunately the web form only gives you 1500 characters and re-reading I should have put more into the complaint than the quotes.
The BBC needs to see that ‘balance’ works both ways. If they are going to silence rational optimism (H/T Matt Ridley) they have to put health warnings on alarmism that is not supported by the science too.
I’m on a mission. Every ‘expert’ that appears I will be asking why his funding and interests not made clear.
BTW it doesn’t end here. The radio 4 feedback program selected two telephone callers as representative of the complaints. They did not explain that they were both linked to green organisations or that they were likely part of an organised campaign. The Bish has more…but I can’t get over their. His blog is blocked in the work proxy for some reason. 😉
ABC aus is as bad, whole lot deserve to be shut down, not worth the taxes paid to keep them annoying the crap outta the public. their pro labor bias is still strident, recent coverage of refugee issues alone.
on warming theyre rabid.
“It may have escaped your notice but it is indubitably true that the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Guardian, the Independent, which represent pretty much every political opinion under the sun are all scrupulously meticulous in censoring anything that doesn’t follow their desired political line”.
“The BBC is just like all the rest of them.”
……..
No it isn’t. You don’t pay a yearly compulsory fee for any of these.