Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The BBC broadcast an obscure programme on state radio on August the 5th, on Radio 4, called “what’s the point of the MET office?”, which allowed the voice of climate skepticism onto British broadcast radio. As a result of this massive breach of BBC policy, there has been a major internal inquiry, and several BBC officials have been sent on mandatory climate re-education courses.
The Telegraph reports on the outcome of the internal hearing into this failure of editorial control;
A Radio 4 programme that claimed that the Met Office had exaggerated the threat posed by global warming as part of its “political lobbying” has been found guilty of serious breaches of the BBC’s editorial guidelines.
The BBC Trust said that What’s the Point of the Met Office?, broadcast on August 5 and hosted by the journalist Quentin Letts, had “failed to make clear that the Met Office’s underlying views on climate change science were supported by the majority of scientists”.
Criticising the corporation of a “serious breach of the editorial guidelines for impartiality and accuracy”, the broadcaster’s governing body said “audiences were not given sufficient information about prevailing scientific opinion to allow them to assess the position of the Met Office and the Met Office position on these criticisms was not adequately included in the programme”.
Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/bbc/12033749/Radio-4-show-that-criticised-Met-Office-stance-on-climate-change-broke-broadcasting-rules.html
Journalist Quentin Letts, who hosted the Radio 4 programme, has written a response to this ridiculous overreaction in The Spectator;
First, an apology. Thanks to me, all journalists at BBC Radio’s ethics and religion division are being sent for indoctrination in climate change. Sorry. In July I made a short Radio 4 programme with them called What’s the Point of the Met Office?, which accidentally sent orthodox warmists into a boiling tizzy. Amid jolly stuff about the history of weather predictions and the drippiness of today’s forecasters, we touched on parliamentary lobbying done by the state-funded Met Office. All hell broke out. Cataracts and hurricanoes! The Met Office itself was unfazed but the eco-lobby, stirred by BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin, went nuts. I was accused of not giving a proper airing to ‘prevailing scientific opinion’. Apostasy had occurred. I was duly flogged on the Feedback programme.
That was the last I thought of it until last week, when I was sent an enormous draft report from the BBC Trust’s editorial standards committee. This said I was likely to be found guilty of a ‘serious breach’ of ‘impartiality and accuracy’. The tone was akin to something from the International Criminal Court at the Hague or the Vatican in Galileo’s day. Did my little programme err? I certainly didn’t try to give listeners a reverential précis of ‘prevailing scientific opinion’ — didn’t think that was my remit. But we did have some fun interviewing an engagingly untidy climate-change sceptic called Piers Corbyn. His brother is now leader of HM Opposition. The BBC hierarchy’s overreaction to all this has been an education, as has the activism of Harrabin. Meanwhile, my ethics and religion mates have been sentenced to hard labour on the BBC Academy’s impartiality online training module, with ‘a substantial scenario on reporting climate-change science’. At school they call this detention.
Read more: http://new.spectator.co.uk/2015/12/quentin-lettss-diary-an-apology-to-the-bbc-journos-who-thanks-to-me-are-being-sent-away-for-re-education/
So what was the programme which caused all that controversy? The following is a link to a recording of the programme. Half an hour of harmless fun, broadcast all the way back in August.
What’s the point of the MET Office?
You would think the BBC would have more interesting ways to spend their money and time, than conducting witch hunts to root out the last vestiges of climate skepticism within their ranks. But I guess that is a decision for the BBC Trust, and of course the taxpayers of Britain, assuming anyone bothers to ask their opinion.
I think we need to establish a “Safe Zone” for all of these climate scientists, broadcasters and other progressives who are so easily offended by skeptical viewpoints.
Since they hate anything warming and love to fret about glaciers, ice melt, polar bears and so on, I would like to propose that we nominate the Arctic as a safe zone for the exclusive use of these sensitive individuals. Perhaps we should start a fund to help finance their relocation expenses?
Thats too much area.
Coats Island is plenty big enough.
No fund, they need to pony up the cash by selling all their oil and carbon based extravagances.
The Cult of Calamitous Carbon will only need one way tickets.
For the Cause of course.
Actions like this one from the BBC are now commonplace in free western democracies. The 4th estate has become a 5th column.
US Progressives hate the 1st Amendment of the Bill of Rights to the US constitution.
The main strea media enforces partissn purity, just without direct gubment control.
The US taxpayer-funded NPR is in some ways like BBC. When Juan Williams, an NPR reporter suggested in 2010 his wariness of muslims in the US on-air, he was summarily canned. And he’s is a Lefty.
Now he probably makes 3x’s as much as a Lefty fair and balanced counter commentator on Fox News.
ain’t America Great.Rupert Murdoch was quite a gift from Down Under to the Colonies.
Wouldn’t Murdoch be a colonist himself?
Both the BBC and NPR are guilty of left wing extremist ideologies. I’d like to think of myself as a centrist, and so I’m completely open to all arguments so long as they remain in the realm of reality. But these days, I really cannot stand the amount of *shit* spewing from these mainstream sources of so-called ‘unbiased’ mainstream mediums.
I live in Boston and every morning, on my ride to work, I have to listen to NPR (National Public Radio) screaming non-sense on-behalf of CAGW extremists…It’s truly sickening.
NPR is government radio.
But the problem is not government telling what they publish, rather than their tax-paid jobs are safe and drag people who are leftish and want to do the world better for them.
The goverment sponsored radios all over the world are very very similar. People who want goverment paid job and love to hear their voice online have tendency to think about e.g. social justice but be incapable to estimate how uncertain some famous Nasa scientist is on sea level rise or Antarctic ice sheet mass balance.
The main problem is that the BBC Trust refers to balance but does not show how the BBC ever gives a sceptical point of view. In other words, the BBC Trust is hoist by its own petard.
BBC – Pravda for the U.K.
It doesn’t occur to the poor Brits that their beloved state-run media isn’t a free press. It’s simply Pravda Lite. Maybe we could introduce them to our Establishment Clause. State religions are troublesome things.
And try to establish a “center” or “right” of center Radio or TV company! This was shown here in Canada with “The Sun ” TV network, they were denied licensing by the CRTC (Canadian regulator run by the Gov) and had to fold, now it streams on the net under the name “The Rebel”, I wonder how long that’s going to last!
Lauren R. the BBC isn’t state run which makes it much worse. All those beeboids doing the right thing and bringing culture and education and correct thinking to the masses.
You might find this site helpful.
http://biasedbbc.org/
May not be state run but sure is state funded.
It is NOT state funded the TV tax is collected directly by the BBC. If they can convinvince people to stop moving over to only watching TV online, they’d stop losing revenue.
The government does sent a period ceiling for the annual tax.
Politicians need to be on the telly so they can’t upset the BBC.
Mr. Green — you’ve gone a petty picky bridge too far. And to what purpose, one wonders… .
There is no true “state” funding. You are meaninglessly pedantic.
“State” funds are taxes (i.e., there is no other “state funding” but taxes).
The BBC is publicly funded by taxes.
Further, the “state” is directly involved in the funding of the BBC, for, its officers will enforce those TV taxes with coercive force if need be (watch what happens if a citizen refuses to pay taxes, and then, what happens if he or she refuses to go quietly along with the police to prison when convicted… .)
“stewgreen
December 7, 2015 at 7:05 am
It is NOT state funded the TV tax is collected directly by the BBC.”
Until very recently the TV license fee was paid at a Govn’t agency called The Post Office, now privatised as I understand. I never paid ANYTHING directly to the BBC.
It still is interesting to me that Britain lets its major media outlet be run by the state. NPR exists in the USA, of course, but it is such a minor player, it doesn’t have much ‘power’. The BBC rules with a big stick, as far as I can tell.
The press should be private; separation of powers and all that. Quite as important as having judicial, executive and legislative be independent.
Consensus means absolutely NOTHING in science; a concept seemingly unknown to the BBC..
The ONLY metric capable of confirming or disconfirming a hypothesis is whether or not hypothetical projections match reality in a statistically significant manner.
Under the rules of the Scientific Method, CAGW is already a disconfirmed hypothesis:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT-5-yr-means1.png
Since CAGW is already dead hypothesis, Leftist organizations like the BBC have no choice but to push the logical fallacies of argumentum ad populum and argumentum ad verecundiam to keep the deceased CAGW myth alive….
And so it goes….
Note the amusing similarity to this meme cartoon:
http://imagefiltr.com/11850-what-the-hell-was-that-my-mind.html
The program has too much science and balance- that’s clearly against its charter to be a government mouthpiece.
I think I might have enjoyed being sent to re-education camp, because I couldn’t resist the urge to demand scientific evidence, data, actual science.
You’re forgetting Pol Pot’s re-education camps. Not a lot of people survived. Likewise, Mao, Stalin and Hitler. Don’t imagine that the BBC’s re-education camps are going to be any different.
If the BBC claims the majority of scientists support global warming ask for their names.
Finding of the Editorial Standards Committee of the BBC Trust
What’s the point of… the Met Office?
BBC Radio 4, 5 August 2015
Finding of 4 December 2015
I had just paid my licence before I read this and am wondering is anyone knows if it would be possible to put in a small claims court demand for a refund of even a small part of my licence fee for failing to uphold the charter obligations which I see as being part of the contract.
I do not see blackmailing employees to conform as being justified within the charter and the costs of both “instructors” and victims is a violation of the charter and blatant theft of licence payers money to spend on something clearly against the charter obligations.
I do hope that everyone who reads this will take the trouble to write and complain to the BBC.
Stop paying and watch the few things that are worthwhile on catch-up sites. You’ll feel much better for it.
Perhaps it is different in the UK, but shouldn’t it be possible to sue the BBC for violation of equal or honest representation?
Your position as a TV tax payer should give you legal standing for the lawsuit. Publicize it, and perhaps you can turn it into a class action law suit?
Someone needs to take them to court.
Also don’t forget to identify roger (harridan) harriban as a primary person in this disgusting bias. Try to establish him as personally liable for his deleterious and reprehensible personal actions.
ATheoK:
In Britain people who think they have been libeled or slandered can sue for damages. But in this case no person could claim to have been damaged except perhaps Quentin Letts.
I am not a lawyer and I am not aware of any British law that enables one to sue anybody for “violation of equal or honest representation”. Indeed, here in the UK such a law would be considered to be an attack on free speech.
This is why the BBC Trust exists to ensure the BBC fulfills its Charter but – as I here explain in this thread – the BBC Trust refuses to conduct its duty.
Richard
This programme was not presented as serious science, but as satire. Satire, especially poking fun at the Establishment, is part of BBC history and culture. Monty Python is a prime example. Today we have ‘Have I Got News for You’ (on TV for > 15 years), and ‘The News Quiz (Radio 4). These routinely have fun at the expense of the Prime Minister, and anyone in the government of the day, the Royal Family, rich millionaires, celebrities, etc, etc. While they must be careful not to be libelous, they are not required to offer a ‘balanced defence’ for each of their victims.
So according to the BBC, climate change has now joined that list of subjects potentially so offensive (along with race, religion, disability, paedophilia, etc), that it is politically incorrect to make jokes about it.
Every other mention of alarmist viewpoints via the BBC, whether they be the beliefs of Charlotte Church, or Prince Charles, or President Obama, or Ban Ki Moon, or Laurent Fabius, fails to inform viewers or listeners that the views are delusional beliefs held by imbeciles who are talking complete donkey shit.
And yet, when Nigel Lawson makes a disputable claim then all hell breaks loose.
The BBC, is worse than Pravda.
In the former USSR, the majority of citizens knew that Pravda was an instrument of the state and served to promote disinformation.
Here in the U.K. the larger number of people are still bamboozled into believing that the BBC is serving the people and has good intentions.
See – worse than Pravda.
Eric Worrall:
You say
The BBC Trust has a statutory duty to ensure that the BBC fulfils the BBC Charter but it is refusing to conduct that duty, and I find myself in a ‘Catch 22’ in my attempts to get the BBC Trust to do its job. My experience demonstrates that there is no legal recourse available to me – a ‘taxpayer of Britain’ – in seeking to obtain compliance of the BBC with its Charter.
The facts of this matter are as follows.
Earlier this year, on 4 March, I provided a complaint to the BBC that the program titled ‘Climate Change by Numbers’ breached the BBC Charter by providing biased and untrue political propaganda.
I recorded the complaint on WUWT here.
Having had no reply of any kind from the BBC, I appealed to the BBC Trust and recorded that appeal on WUWT here. The reply I obtained from the BBC Trust I recorded as the immediately following post in that WUWT thread.
Weeks later, having obtained nothing from the BBC or the BBC Trust, I sent the following email to the BBC Trust on 8 April 2015 08:51:23 GMT.
“ Re: BBC Complaint – Climate Change by Numbers
Dear Ms Seehra:
Nearly a month has passed since I received your reply to me that I copy below. It reported that the BBC Audience Services had “advised that they will send you a response to [my] concerns as soon as possible and the complaints manager has asked [you] to pass on his apologies for the delay”. Since then I have heard nothing from them.
Please note that my complaint was and is that the BBC clearly breached its Charter by broadcasting blatantly biased and factually inaccurate political propaganda in the form of the programme titled ‘Climate Change by Numbers’ broadcast on BBC4 at 2100 to 22:15 hours on Monday 2 March 2015. My complaint consisted of clear and accurate information and argument supported by all necessary references.
It seems from your reply to me that I am in a ‘Catch 22’.
You say;
“I should explain that the BBC complaints process requires that complaints must be dealt with in the first instance by the BBC’s management; the Trust’s role in this process is only at the final stage, hearing complaints on appeal.”
But the BBC’s failure to reply to my complaint means there is no formal reply for me to appeal.
I am now writing to you to assert that
(a) the BBC’s failure to reply to my complaint is a response to my complaint
and
(b) the BBC’s failure to reply to my complaint is a tacit admission that they cannot dispute my complaint.
Hence, I am requesting that
(1) you accept this email as being my appeal against the BBC’s response to my complaint
and
(2) you call upon the BBC to correct its Breach of the BBC Charter by making a public declaration that the programme was blatantly biased and factually inaccurate political propaganda.
I am continuing my practice of making a public record of all my correspondence on this matter at WUWT and, therefore, I am copying this email to that record.
Richard S Courtney”
I have had no reply of any kind to that email.
Clearly, there is no legal recourse available to this ‘taxpayer of Britain’ when seeking to obtain compliance of the BBC with its Charter.
Richard
Mods:
I have made a post to this thread that has vanished. It is about the BBC Trust having put me in a ‘Catch 22’.
Please be so kind as to check the ‘bin’ and to recover it if it is there, or tell me if it is not so I can resubmit it.
Thanking you in anticipation.
Richard
Quentin Letts is a renowned Political Sketch Writer, and writes for the Daily Mail where David Rose also hangs out.
In addition the often biased BBC is often caught out by other political commentators, since the aforementioned Piers Corbyn got an airing on This Week late last Thursday night, which is hosted by Andrew Neil. Quentin Letts is a regular contributor too on this programme.
Now this particular week was a by election programme, so lots of Labourites were featured within prior to switching to Oldham and Royton to hear the result and the election of Jim McMahon a new Labour MP.
Quentin Letts and Andrew Neil are known as right wing.
The BBC reflects the views of the London elite.
It cannot hide its contempt for Jeremy Corbyn.
Any programme mentioning him must have at least two or three right wing ‘Blairite’ MPs to explain what a disaster he is.
No analysis of why the vast majority of Labour grassroots members and public back him.
They have long since abandoned any attempt to give a balanced outlook and instead push the consensus of the London elite.
I’m not a Jeremy Corbyn fan, but I agree the establishment is grossly underestimating his potential appeal.
Eric Worrall:
You say
I doubt they are “underestimating his potential appeal”. I think they are frightened by his demonstrated appeal and are acting to counteract it.
Firstly, the ‘establishment’ failed to recognise that Corbyn would be elected Labour Leader by a landslide, but they remember how the Tories won several successive elections when a similar ‘outsider’ (i.e. Thatcher) unexpectedly became leader of the Tories. Secondly, the Labour Party Membership has increased three-fold since Corbyn’s election as Labour Leader, and this numerical growth of a UK political party is unprecedented since WW2. Thirdly, Corbyn ‘wipes the floor’ with Cameron at each session of Prime Minister’s Questions although this is mostly a result of Cameron’s incompetence as PM.
Opponents of Labour had hoped Corbyn’a appeal was restricted to a small left-wing fringe of the electorate and would reduce support of the bulk of Labour supporters. Failure of that hope is demonstrated by the result of the Oldham West and Royton by-election which Labour won on Thursday.
The media had proclaimed that Corbyn’s leadership would induce a collapse of the Labour vote in the by-election. This media campaign induced such fear in the Labour Party’s ‘machine’ that they dissuaded Corbyn from visiting the constituency during the by-election campaign.
Upon the vote, Labour’s Jim McMahon won the by-election with a majority of more than 10,000 and provided Labour with an increased share of the vote since the General Election in May that was obtained by swings from both UKIP and the Tories. The following morning, Corbyn raced to the constituency to share in the victory celebrations.
I think the ‘establishment’ can see the actual “appeal” of Corbyn and the ‘establishment’ is mounting their anti-Corbyn media campaign because they fear the electoral potential of that “appeal”.
Richard
Meanwhile, listening to news reports (eg. BBC Radio 4 Today), on the flooding in the north of England, there is refreshingly little mention of climate change. Just heard an interview with the Environment Agency’s new Chief Exec. He said the floods are caused by Nature, and will recur from time to time, and that its impossible to protect all the people all the time. And while this was described as ‘probably a record’, no mention of ‘this is getting more common’, or even ‘this is what climate science predicted’. I recently heard an unchallenged interview with Matt Ridley on the same programme. So despite the nonsense of the Quentin Letts progamme, the BBC does seem to be moving to more balance, in my view.
The Beeb just wheeled out ‘Professor’ ‘Dame’ Julia Slingo to correct that omission.
Now removed from the BBC website reports on the flooding in Cumbria, John Leyland, deputy director of operations at the Environment Agency commented that the models the UK EA used to trigger flood warnings did not take account of persistent heavy rain.
He’s quoted in the newspapers
It is pathetic in the extreme. However, the BBC is not really a “state” broadcaster. The state has no control over what it produces.
Charter renewal is decided by Parliament. Auntie knows who her bosses are.
That it produces at all is at the whim of the state. That it produces badly is with the blessing of the state. That it is getting worse with time is expected by the state. That all this is aligned with the agenda of the state is not a coincidence.
it was light hearted poke at the Met Office…..nothing more than anyone in the street , or at the water cooler in the office, would say every day.
http://cliscep.com/2015/12/06/do-not-read-this-blog-post/
All fundamentalists lack a sense of humour and that they worked themselves into hysteria over this is telling…
But worse is the fact that the fundamentalists have infiltrated the BBC to such an extent that it is now theirs…
First we take Manhattan then we…….
The text of the radio programme that so upset the BBC management can be read here, thanks to the hard work of Alex Cull who transcribed it.
Alex Cull is a true internet hero.
Extracts from B.B.C. ‘Pensions Report and Accounts 2015’
“the Scheme has committed to an investment in UK renewable
energy assets with BlackRock” (page 8).
“The Trustees have signed up to the UK Stewardship code and the UNEP Finance Initiative principles for Responsible
Investment (UNPRI) and is also a member of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC)” (page 9).
Published online here.
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/mypension/en/report_and_accounts_2015.pdf
#1 OK That Blackstone is a future investment, but how much?. In previous years we know the BBC has Green investments cos they shout about the ethics codes etc, but most of the pension fund is not in direct equities but via other investments funds, so at a glance we haven’t been able to work out how much is in BBC pension is in Green.
#2 The pension shortfall has to be extracted from the PROGRAMME BUDGET
OK “The market value of the Scheme’s assets rose during the year by £1,946.5m” but they have a lot of people paying in AND in each future year they have more pensioners to payout, so it must grow much more than inflation (currently close to zero).
No wonder our University campus are shunning speakers on a range of topics (if they do not seem to concur with the local view) when you have a national broadcaster engineering that stance. What else has the BBC formed an opinion about? The employment of zealots to proselytise rather puts one in mind of the fulminating ranters that were produced by the English Civil War. Once this errant form of confirmation of the ‘official perspective’ or the adoption, normality and protection for a singular view takes hold there are more than enough willing dupes to act upon its behalf heralding an end to scepticism, doubt, contrariness, even enquiry. Why do we need to think at all when an opinion, a postulation, cannot be opposed and fact is whatever the authority deems appropriate? And worse, a power that has assumed authority by what seems to be a quiet, calculated, revolution?
We are not at the high tide of the Global Warming swell alone. We are at a stage in our comfortable imagining of a world view where it is slanderous, dangerous, to oppose that which is self-evidently wrong or even cast a light on doubt, contestable or so ill-defined as to be dangerous of itself. What was considered, entertained, at the Enlightenment is now disallowed at a time when words, concepts and imaginings are policed and power exercised by proscription. We see ideas and the lexicon being owned and only employed at the behest of those that have annexed them.
What has happened to real authority rather than this dubious authoritarianism that is practised by the BBC? In so many ways the Corporation has taken upon itself the mantel of governance and assumed a right to deflect, groom and castigate its audience, to be the fountain-head. The inquisitorial moral stance which it is want to constantly perpetuate, if it were benign, would be a Godsend to all right thinking people it would at least be enquiry. However, what it has chosen to do is to follow the narrow path of self-righteous liberalism and to use its position to promulgate the Metropolitan view, to become so introverted as to be a dangerous element in a progressive society. (Dear reader, there is something you have to understand: when people abroad speak of Britain they casually call it London but rightly estimate, unwittingly, that ‘London’ describes the hegemony that the capital represents in Britain’s life).
This was on BBC TV last week superb counter blow against mind control central. The Gulag beckons for Andrew Neil.