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.
Criticising the corporation of a “serious breach of the editorial guidelines for impartiality and accuracy”,
The two terms “impartiality” and “accuracy” is in UK something to be desired. And there is little chance where science and engineering subjects are concerned.
They have sunk themselves into “the consensus” and as such no other view, light hearted or otherwise can be tolerated (broadcast). Just imagine someone taking on Christopher Monckton in a series of programs whereupon all evidence is made available from both sides of the argument. It is a very important topic…but the state broadcaster just won’t do it. Easy way, easy money!
Heard this programme. Thought it was a bit of harmless tongue in cheek fun. Seems there are people in the met office and global warming camp who are so insecure that they raise such a stink. The BBC is also so worried that they give in to this intimidation that it, as has previously been stated, gives up it’s impartiality.
The logical outcome of this is that any programme on climate change should also present the sceptical view. And pigs will fly!
BBC is shamelessly riding on the devastation, deaths and losses in Chennai due to flooding after heavy rains, attributing it to ” climate change “.
They are shameless slimeballs, worse than vermin, using deaths and devastation to further their climate activism. Charlatans. May they all rot in hell.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35024115
The flooding was due to very heavy monsoon rains exacerbated by politicians – real estate lobby nexus allowing construction in low lying areas, marshlands, lake beds and river beds, leaving water nowhere to drain, resulting in water flooding the city. That was due to sheer corruption and reckless constructions. Nothing to do with ” climate change ” as meant IPCC and BBC verbiage which equals climate change to man made warming caused by human emissions of carbon dioxide.
The BBC absolutely HATE anyone offering their own opinion on so-called ‘climate change’. Last week they had the Green party’s only MP – Caroline Lucas, on Question Time (a leading current affairs programme) and she was bemoaning the lack of ANY discussion on Paris COP 21. The reason was obvious – the BBC couldn’t control questions or responses from the audience or panel, so refused point-blank to discuss the matter. That oversight ran contrary to the BBC’s hysterical wall-to-wall coverage on their own website. Very revealing.
So bad predictions and predictors must receive equal air time to balance out fact checking and evil model questioning? At least we are getting further proof that government monopolies behave the same everywhere. Perhaps they can be modeled too.
If we are right and they are wrong then the repercussions are enormous for the “Warmist” scientists, politicians and journalists…..Organisations such as the .BBC, Guardian and Independent would also be in big trouble.
Legal action against organisations and individuals would probably end in prison sentences. The claims for compensation on Carbon Taxes could bankrupt the UK….in fact we simply could not afford it.
Worst of all the “Guardianista’s” will come off worst…..as they have spent well over a decade informing all and sundry of the AGW scare…and how we have to change our lives etc. How on earth could they face a dinner party????….hahaha. Fellow guests would have a field day!!!
The fact that the BBC and all the AGW crowd have no tolerance with those of us who take a different view is a clear indication that they are on shifting sand….and sooner or later the truth will win out.
I’ve just listened to Julia, the Chief Scientist at the Met Office (UK) giving an emotional answer that the Cumbria floods are all due to Global Warming….if she looks at a report of previous floods of the area she will see that there is no proof whatsoever. See http://www.mangeogsoc.org.uk/pdfs/watkins_whyte.pdf
John, my recollection of what she said does not fit with the paper you quote where “Eighteen
of the floods resulted from intense convectional storms, mostly in summer. Sixteen were due to precipitation associated with slow moving or stationery frontal systems.”
What happened here was a ribbon of rain moving along its length that was the cause of the large amount of rain, this stretched back to South America as she suggested. Not summer, not slow moving and not stationery. That would imply that what we have here is a 1 in more than 415 year event since it appears nothing like it has occured since 1600. Now I would suggest that there is nothing in AGW theory that would predict an increase in frequency of such a “sideways” moving storm, simply a freak of chaos.
You can read the transcript of the program at
http://cliscep.com/2015/12/06/do-not-read-this-blog-post/
In the comments I added some choice quotes from the BBC Trust report.
OK Was this decision made judiciously ? Did the BBC Trust follow some rules with perhaps warped evidence ? Or did Harrabin just write the whole thing ?
Seems to to me we have 2 choices :
#1 – Fight on principle, not for Letts, but the next person not to be denied of his/her voice due to the precedent.
#2 Leave the decision to stand ? cos to anyone not brainwashed it is just so obvious how ridiculous the BBC is ..as within the hour somewhere on its networks there be obvious climate disinformation : some ridiculous claims with be made to the but because it’s an alarmist claim it will just be let thru unchallenged.
– And you can say to children “Look just don’t take the BBC seriously it’s just barking mad on climate banning any skepticism whilst lionising the looniest claim of any alarmist.
stewgreen:
You say
OK. Please say how we can “Fight on principle” and/or not “Leave the decision to stand”.
Please note that – as my above post in this thread explains – there is no legal action we can take to fulfill either of your “choices”. And please read the links from that post before deciding on an answer.
Richard
Richard,
FOI any internal correspondance mentioning you or the the letters you sent. My understanding is that even in the UK failures to abide by FOIA are actionable.
bobl:
Thankyou for your comment that says
Yes, I could frame and present a FOIA request but if successful that would not induce the BBC Trust to do its job so would not enforce the BBC to abide by its Charter.
At issue is the lack of any possibility of effective action. The ‘Catch 22’ I am in demonstrates that the BBC and BBC Trust are happy when people waste effort on ineffective activities.
Richard
If teachers in the UK now have a duty to report to the police students who they think may have been radicalised, perhaps the BBC should be reporting their own staff who have been radicalised and are now indoctrinating the public about climate change?
I listened to the programme and it was a refreshing change from the usual pro AGW propaganda from the BBC. The beeb usually peddle the man made global warming meme as if it were a fact. The propaganda is included in programmes about gardening, the countryside and even in light entertainment. This is direct breach of their charter for impartiality. They appear, inter alia to be influenced by the secret meeting reported in several newspapers including the Daily Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/10566952/Row-over-BBC-climate-change-conference-cover-up.html#disqus_thread
What is depressing about this is that it was not a one-off programme. ‘What’s the Point of…’ is now in its seventh series. Its subjects are an eclectic mix – recent programmes have asked the question of the Book of Common Prayer; the Army Reserve; the British obsession with lawns; and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. They are all hosted by Letts, and the intention seems to be a light-hearted attempt to puncture the pomposity that can develop in well-meaning organisations. To provide a flavour – one programme considered the National Trust, a charity which owns and maintains historic buildings. The tag line was:
‘Maintaining our heritage; pickling our history; or a job creation scheme for the retired.’
Several religious themes – including ‘What’s the point of the Chief Rabbi’ have been broadcast without a referral to the BBC Trust Editorial Standards Committee.
Harrabin is being suggested as the agitator behind this referral. His output appears to be little else than the uncritical regurgitation of press releases from the latest ‘its all doom’ paper. BBC journalism at its ‘finest’.
Ever sine Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal”, the Brits have had a problem accepting satire for what it is. They seem to have taken Orwell’s “1984” as a guidebook to programming not only propaganda but their own staff.
Daesh it all, the ‘so called’ BBC won’t even use the correct term for the people we truly need to fight…
To all those here that like to denigrate the Daily Mail – Quentin Letts is the Daily Mail’s political editor.
R
BTW, you have the wong logo. The BBC changed to this logo about ten years ago.
http://thepeoplescube.com/images/BBC_Sharia.gif
They should have just caned the offenders. It’s faster and assuredly much less painful than sitting through the “[…] BBC Academy’s impartiality online training module, […].”
Caning seems more humane to me, IMO.
‘Why did you resign?’ asks #2
“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered” replies #6
Which is why he was classified as ‘un-mutual’ and sent to The Village.
The light of reason is going out all over Europe and indeed the world.
The BBC is no longer viewed as impartial.
The internet makes it possible to bury the truth with a barrage of noise.
Soon we will make the full circle back to Bruno & Vaninni
“The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus. But these dissenters (or even sceptics) will still be heard, as they should, because it is not the BBC’s role to close down this debate. They cannot be simply dismissed as ‘flat-earthers’ or ‘deniers’, who ‘should not be given a platform’ by the BBC. Impartiality always requires a breadth of view: for as long as minority opinions are coherently and honestly expressed, the BBC must give them appropriate space. ‘Bias by elimination’ is even more offensive today than it was in 1926. The BBC has many public purposes of both ambition and merit – but joining campaigns to save the planet is not one of them. The BBC’s best contribution is to increase public awareness of the issues and possible solutions through impartial and accurate programming. Acceptance of a basic scientific consensus only sharpens the need for hawk-eyed scrutiny of the arguments surrounding both causation and solution. It remains important that programme-makers relish the full range of debate that such a central and absorbing subject offers, scientifically, politically and ethically, and avoid being misrepresented as standard-bearers.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/review_report_research/impartiality_21century/report.pdf
Revised link to “Wagon Wheels” BBC Trust report:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/our_work/editorial_standards/impartiality/safeguarding_impartiality.html
It would seem Mr Letts is entirely in line with the Trusts policy and should raise this with his management.
Living here in the UK, we ought to be more aware of the subjective junior common room attitude of the BBC.
Balanced reporting is so last millennium. Minority views must now be presented as authoritative.
It has recently come to my attention that the perpetrator of the infamous spots with exploding heads of schoolkids, “No Pressure”, for the 10:10 climate alarmism campaign was Richard Curtis, the Czech-Australian screenwriter of “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, “Bridget Jones’ Diary” (adapted), “Love Actually”, etc., and of the Blackadder, Mr. Bean and Vicar of Dibley British TV series.
Glad I never paid to watch any of those movies or shows.
It didn’t end with the 2re-education”:
“Last week, after a bizarre and focused lobbying campaign from environmental activists, the programme was removed from the BBC’s iPlayer playback facility.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3355441/QUENTIN-LETTS-vaporised-BBC-s-Green-Gestapo.html#ixzz3u72e8wiU
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