Bishop Hill BBC stealth edit policy
Apr 8, 2008 BBC Nature's general science blog, The Great Beyond, rounds up the Harrabin/Abbess story for its readers and adds a little titbit that shows the BBC in a pretty poor light. Author Daniel Cressey points to a BBC editor's blog post which outlines the corporation's approach to stealth edits:
When we make a major change or revision to a story we republish it with a new timestamp, indicating it’s a new version of the story. If there’s been a change to a key point in the story we will often point this out in the later version (saying something like "earlier reports had said...").
But lesser changes - including minor factual errors, corrected spellings and reworded paragraphs - go through with no new timestamp because in substance the story has not actually progressed any further. This has led to accusations we are "stealth editing" - a sinister-sounding term that implies we are actively trying to hide what we are doing. We’re not. It’s just that continually updating the timestamp risks making it meaningless, and pages of notes about when and where minor revisions are made do not make for a riveting read.
Cressey helpfully shows us some of the revisions made so we can judge for ourselves how well Roger Harrabin is adhering to this policy. Here's one of them:
Old version
This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory. But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend - and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years.
New version
But this year's temperatures would still be way above the average - and we would soon exceed the record year of 1998 because of global warming induced by greenhouse gases.
Now I don't know about you, but to me, this doesn't look to me like "minor factual errors, corrected spellings and reworded paragraphs". It's a complete change to the meaning. So as well as caving in to minor threats from a slightly loopy environmentalist, Roger Harrabin appears to be in breach of BBC policy on revising his articles.
Reader Comments (1)
And not doing so ensures it.