Dig for victory

Deltoid has picked up on my article about Roger Harrabin's response to the Jo Abbess affair. He says I'm accusing Harrabin of lying. What I said was I'm not convinced by his arguments, which is not the same thing. At the moment, I'm reserving judgement. As Mr Deltoid says, it is possible that Roger H received an email from the WMO in the half hour during which he made such an astonishing volte-face, but IMHO it's a tad unlikely.

I tried to ask Roger to publish the WMO correspondence via a comment on the Editors Blog thread, but it doesn't seem to be accepting any input at the moment. So to shortcut the process I've sent in a Freedom of Information request to the BBC to get all the correspondence between them and the WMO on this article.

Let's see what happens. 

Comments

[Simon]

It is pretty obvious you haven't accused Harrabin of lying, but since Harrabin has now posted his hand waving justification for the whole episode you have every right to be still dubious of his arguments.

I mean, after all, in his opinion there wasn't any "material difference" between the two versions of the WMO story. Something a lot of people have disagreed with.

I thnk we are allowed to be dubious of his interpretations.

[GCooper]

Well done with the FOI request!

Assuming it is fulfilled and that the BBC coughs-up all the relevant information, it will be fascinating to see what really happened.

Personally, I am sceptical about Harrabin's excuses. He has form, the changes were anything but minimal and his e-mail to Ms. Swampy was curious in several respects - not least his uncalled for remark about not changing the timestamp.

[max]

Of course he's not lying. He's miswriting.

[Jack Hughes]

Stick to your guns.

The comment facility on the BBC "editors' blog" is notorious for not working. Many think this is a policy to limit comments.

[DocBud]

Being savaged by Tim Lambert is a badge of honour. He himself is rather cute with his use of known facts.

"Fortunately the WMO (and others) contacted Harrabin"

He has no evidence that WMO contacted Harrabin, but he does have evidence that Jo Abbess contacted him and Harrabin's response to her that she should check in ten minutes and see if she is happy with the changes.

One would certainly have thought that Harrabin would be only to keen to publish any e-mails from WMO that suggest he changed the story in response to them rather than a slightly unhinged activist.

[Bishop Hill]

Doc

I must say, my thought when I realised I was getting attention from Tim L was "I've arrived!".