- Bishop Hill blog

I've written a couple of posts on the subject of BBC environment correspondent Roger Harrabin's work with something called the Cambridge Environment and Media Programme, which appears to be a body which tries to ensure that the BBC adheres to green orthodoxy in all its output.

CEMP originally came to my attention when one of Harrabin's emails was leaked, revealing that he was spending time trying to come up with a party line to take about Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth being found to be misleading in a court case. The BBC's website at the time had a profile of Harrabin, which revealed that he was a CEMP director, and that CEMP itself was "supported" by the BBC. I assume that this means financially supported, although other interpretations are possible.

Then at the start of this year, I noticed that Harrabin and CEMP had been involved in trying to put together the Planet Relief telethon, together with a marauding horde of greens and BBC bigwigs. This was revealed by the blog of one of the environmentalists, Matt Prescott, who thanked Harrabin and his CEMP colleague Joe Smith of the Open University for introducing him to some of the BBC bosses at a CEMP-organised seminar.

CEMP has now come to my attention again, as Tony N at Harmless Sky has been taking a look at their activity too. He notes that the BBC profile of Harrabin is no longer online. On a hunch, I took a look at the Matt Prescott article too, and found that it no longer mentioned Harrabin either - only Joe Smith.

This seemed like just too much of a coincidence to me. I could have been mistaken on one of them, but not both. Fortunately, through the delights of the Wayback Machine, I was able to retreive the original pages.

Here's the BBC profile of Harrabin, from which the pertinent quote is

He co-directs the Cambridge Environment and Media Programme, which is supported by BBC News to bring together senior journalists with outside experts to discuss media coverage of long-term sustainable development issues.

And here's the Matt Prescott piece. It originally said

Joe Smith (Open University) and Roger Harrabin (BBC News) originally introduced me to Jon, in Cambridge, and also played a crucial role in helping to get things off the ground a couple of years ago.

It now reads:

Joe Smith (Open University) originally introduced me to Jon, in Cambridge, and also played a crucial role in helping to get things off the ground a couple of years ago.

Something to hide, gentlemen?