Bishop Hill Mail on Sunday on the Beeb
David Rose at the Mail on Sunday has a long article about the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme, the seminars set up by Roger Harrabin and Joe Smith to inform BBC editorial policy. I get a mention
[Joe Smith's] opinion, which he sets out on his website, is that ‘everyday human activity – moving, eating, keeping warm or cool – is gently stoking a slow-boil apocalypse’. He calls climate change ‘one of the challenges of the age’ and urges the world to take radical action. A Freedom of Information Act disclosure obtained by Andrew Montford, who writes the climate-change blog Bishop Hill, reveals that the Tyndall Centre provided £5,000 a year for three years from 2002.
The BBC has given Rose a response to the article as follows:
‘The BBC is aware of the funding arrangements for the Real World seminars. They have been considered against our editorial guidelines and raised no issues about impartiality for the BBC or its output.
When you think about it, this is pretty amazing.
BBC editorial policy can be decided by a bunch of environmentalists sitting round a table with senior BBC decision-makers and this raises no issues about impartiality?
UEA can fund the private activity of a BBC journalist and this raises no issues about impartiality either?
Extraordinary.
Reader Comments (68)
It's only extra-ordinary if you start from the premise that these people (BBC, UEA, the environment NGOs) care what others think about them.
They don't. And thus they can't even be bothered to make up plausible excuses.
The BBC has shown over many years now that it doesn't care about issues of impartiality because it can decide what is impartial and controls what we know about its impartiality. It is impossible to complain about the BBC's impatiality, even if one goes through ones MP. The BBC Trust does nothing and appears to be the BBC's poodle. The BBC is too powerful.
Check out the activities of Joe Smith at http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/staff/people-profile.php?name=Joe_Smith
We pay for this garbage. It is frightening how, in these economically constrained times, money is just poured down the drain.
It should be extraordinary, but it is par for the course.
This is what happens when a publicly funded organisation, that is supposed to uphold impartiality and balance, is shielded from accountability and fights transparency while hiding behind wholly unjustified FOI exemptions.
The politicians have allowed the BBC to grow so large and powerful they are too scared to take it on, lest the BBC turns its resources to undermining them. As always, cowardice is at the heart of the failure and refusal to take action. And we pay for it.
8:21 AM Phillip Bratby
Reading that makes you sick - what a self-serving little nobody*.
* It's Sunday, and the Bishop might take offence if I said what I really thought.
@Philip Bratby
This part of Joe Smith's CV is particularly interesting:
Media, environment and development (1996 - ongoing)
For over a decade (1996 - present) I have designed and facilitated strategic level seminars aimed at improving coverage of complex environment and development issues, working with the BBC and other partners. This work has been shaped by insights from contemporary social science, and is integral to a programme of action research resulting in academic and policy publications.In the tradition of action research my findings are feeding directly back into decision-making within media and related organisations. The seminars have been publicly credited with catalysing fresh thinking in BBC outputs across platforms and with leading directly to specific and major innovations in programming, including Africa Lives on the BBC 2005 and the Climate Chaos season 2006, as well as other environment and development related seasons and projects.
HuhneMustGo
Love the moniker - he is the most dangerous man in the UK.
I agree, I had to restrain my language and keep my BP under control.
@Philip... thanks for that
Joe Smith sums himself up... "Hence I draw on the term 'action research' "
but at the taxpayers expense?
Behind the cloak of his academic position and the letters after his name, he is a political activist with an undemocratic leverage on the system he exploits. Woodworm...
I used to believe the BBC was worth reforming but sadly I no longer feel it can be saved the change in the public's attitude is getting very noticeable and they are no longer seen as a jewel just a tax burden !. Maybe if they were cut back to just it's core ideals of factual and news with a new staff qualified in their jobs not through nepotism and which political party/ideology they support [ note only one allowed] then they may have a use !
Thanks Phillip Bratby for the link to Joe’s Open University page. Do listen to his “letter to a climate sceptic”. Don’t stop when the moody baritone clarinet comes in - there’s more. Go right on to the end “..trust me on this. Joe”.
Agree with autonomous mnd, his/her summary points are spot on.
In the exuberance of my younger days, we used a significant word, "professionalism". It was always ill-defined, but fairly easy to see in operation. I've just helped explain it to some younger people on a blog unrelated to climate, at their request.
Whereas we used to tut-tut at occasional personal breaches of professionalism, we find today that large groups are forming cliques whose regard for, or knowledge of, professionalism seems non-existent. The hockeystick makers are an example.
They can gain no respect, because it remains unchanged that respect is earned by example.
The BBC (aided by the BBC Trust) does not care what anybody thinks about its stance on CAGW. Even though the viewers have paid up to £3,3 billion in a year, environmental activists are free to tout their views as fact while those who point out the flaws are ignored. The arrogance of the BBC beggars belief.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/consult/delivering_quality_first.shtml
A BBC Trust consultation in progress till 21 December.
Do you think that anybody will be listening?
Who funds the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which the BBC described as 'influential' the moment it was formed ?
The bottom line is that, whatever Harrabin reported about climate gate, he reported about them after getting money from them AND it seems the BBC knew about it and decided not to tell the viewers and to let him report climate gate.
This is a resigning matter.
Rose quotes Harrabin as saying:
“I was praised by the world’s leading climate sceptics for my reporting. Those seminars – for which I received no personal gain – included contributions from sceptics.”
Anyone know more about that? Who were the sceptics who contributed to the seminars? Have they too been sworn to secrecy?
Re: Hengist
Not the public purse.
What we call propaganda, Joe Smith calls "action research":
(from the his Open University page, link above) :
"In the tradition of action research my findings are feeding directly back into decision-making within media and related organisations. The seminars have been publicly credited with catalysing fresh thinking in BBC outputs across platforms and with leading directly to specific and major innovations in programming, including Africa Lives on the BBC 2005 and the Climate Chaos season 2006, as well as other environment and development related seasons and projects."
Translation: My propaganda is working
Hengist
Why don't you go their web site and find out for yourself? Since they are a registered charity their accounts are open to public scrutiny.
And as TerryS says, they are not funded by the public purse so your question is, as usual, of no relevance to this thread at all.
The problem with the BBC is not whether they are right or wrong about global warming (or about who should be doing what in the Middle East, which is another of their hobby horses) but that they are a national broadcaster, paid for by an impost on the taxpayer, and it is their function to entertain, educate and inform, not to take sides in the Middle East debate, the global warming debate or any other debate.
I want to hear both sides of an argument and I am not getting that from the BBC from where I ought to be getting it and from where I have the right to demand it. I don't demand impartiality from the national press nor the GWPF nor any other organisation which is not funded from the public purse.
citizenjoesmith
IBT
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Key submissions
To Ofcom consultation on the future of ITV November 2011
To DCMS consultation on a new Communications Bill June 2011
To House of Lords Communications Committee inquiry into BBC governance and regulation April 2011
IBT report on UK broadcasters and their compliance and editorial policies, also submitted to the Lords Communications Committee February 2011
To BBC Trust on its Science Impartiality Review August 2010
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re one of his main collaborators, Stephen Peake
Stephen Peake
Dr Stephen Peake is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Technologies at the Open University...
Recent projects include:
•Investment banking (advice on managing risks around climate change and sustainable development)
•Academic consultant for the 2006 OU-BBC climate change season...
He has given evidence to various national governments and international organisations including: the Fuel Economy Panel of the American Automobile Manufacturers Association in Detroit, USA...
Previous appointments
Originally trained as a physicist, Stephen gained a PhD in Engineering and Management from the University of Cambridge, where he also worked as Research Associate in corporate environmental management and auditing. From 1993-1995 he was Research Fellow in the Energy and Environmental Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, London, during which time he was seconded for several months to group planning at Shell International Petroleum Company in London.
From 1995-2000, Stephen served as international civil servant at the International Energy Agency at the OECD in Paris and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), based in Bonn, Germany...
http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/research/associates/peakes.html
Hengist could you help me out here?
a) What has the GWPF's funding have to do with the proposition that the public funded BBC is being swayed by lobby's biased towards alarmism?
b) If the BBC is being swayed by lobby's biased towards alarmism, why should we accept their assessment of non-alarmist organisations at face value?
Circular no?
Can somebody draw one of those maps showing the incestuous links between all of these parasite organisations?
Or maybe I'll get a clearer picture if I just buy a can of worms and stare at it for awhile. Publicly funded and completely non-productive worms, of course.
geoffchambers
Yes I would like to see Harribos list of impressed sceptics!.
Hengst the BBC have no right to decide what I should hear or see , we pay for them and we have the right to question them the GWPF finances bother me not why should it they don't want to control my world !
A little doggerel for a Sunday morning:
Ode to CO2 Alarmists
Oh what a tangled web they've weaved
From their 'good intentions'
Of breath they leave us quite bereaved
At all their machinations
The loss they bring
The harm they cause
Are not by them intended
They seek to save us from ourselves
And so they are contented
But when a little light is shone
Their tricks are not so dandy
Their closed-world views
Their 'settled debates'
Their grimly told imperatives
Are all so weak they dare not seek
To see there are alternatives
3rd November 2011
Welcome to IBT’s November newsletter with an update on our work and relevant news from the media industry.
BBC cuts
Last month the BBC Executive published its Delivering Quality First (DQF) plan, with across the board cuts. There will now be a public consultation by the BBC Trust. The plan envisages ‘a smaller and radically reshaped BBC’. Some of the key cuts in content will involve: reduced budgets for entertainment on BBC1 and 2, for sport and for bbc.co.uk, BBC4 playing more of a complementary role to BBC2, and BBC3 having a similar relationship with BBC1. In terms of international content the main impact will be in news where some foreign correspondent posts will be cut and there will be a bigger role for World Service journalists to file stories for BBC News. It’s likely that there will also be a cut in current affairs coverage on BBC2. One of the most interesting policies announced as part of DQF is ‘a BBC ready to partner with others to build a shared digital public space.’ Since the BBC is notoriously bad at partnerships it will interesting to see how this policy is fleshed out. IBT will be publishing research next year which looks at how we can all play a bigger role in creating a more effective public space where our issues can be debated.
BBC Online briefing
Last month saw the latest of our briefings by commissioners. Steve Herrmann, editor of BBC News Online, gave a fascinating account of how the BBC’s online news operation works and named key commissioners who could be contacted directly with story ideas. Please let me know if you’d like a copy of the briefing notes. These notes are only available to IBT members.
John Shade's doggerel "Ode to CO2 Alarmists"-
Thank you! Brilliant work.
Where and when did Harrabin inform the license fee payers of his additional income? How many BBC journalists take money from outside sources to work on the topics they report on?
I feel like pitching a tent at White City
PS Roger has been MIA for weeks. Gardening?
This can be true only if BBC is allready activists spot...
So they don't lie there.
Thanks BBC for honesty!
Maurizio
This was posted on another thread.
http://www.gordonpoole.com/keynote-speaker/roger-harrabin.aspx
http://www.greenbusinessevents.co.uk/speakers/harrabinr.html
http://www.celebrity.co.uk/bsb/Guns%20&%20Roses.htm
http://www.performingartistes.co.uk/artistes/439/roger-harrabin.htm
The BBC says Harrabin didn't benefit financially from the Cambridge Media Group.
But lookout these links - gravy train - impartiality!!!!
And look how much he charges....
[BH adds: I think this comes from being a BBC journalist rather than being anything to do with CMEP]
This story has grown legs on the popular Newsbusters website in the US:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/11/20/bbc-environment-analyst-received-15000-pounds-climategate-university
Joe Smith isn't even a Geographer, his first degree was a, BA in Social And Political Sciences (Cambridge). His list of scribblings, reads like a list of titles from a library science fiction section, this bloke isn't a Geographer, he's just one of Black's climate activist agitators.
How many more are there like him [taught by him?] but beavering away in Government departments and central government.
I didn't quite realise how much the OU is riddled with warmists and propagandists, this is scandal.
Taking the government shilling corrupts whole institutions but wasn't that the idea in the first place, it is after all a post normal EU universe that we now inhabit.
James gets it: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100027748/the-real-reason-for-agw-post-normal-science/
Athelstan,
Indeed - you could start at the top - the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Beddington himself - is actually an economist trained at the LSE.
Economics is not a science by any measure.
@Mike Jackson, you wont find the answer on the GWPF website. Nor will you find it in their accounts. They keep their donor's identities secret.
@Leopard I don't see evidence that they are being swayed by lobbies biased towards alarmism. As Ive already pointed out the BBC considers the GWPF 'influential' .
Basically the BBC make no attempt at impartiality whatsoever. This applies whether they are dealing wiyh catastrophic warming; in party politics ensuring the Greens get 40 times the voverage per vote (all of it friendly) that UKIP do (none of it supportive)(I just saw a Beeboid on Politics Show telling Farage he was "racist" for not wanting to be in a German dominsted EU - Farage pointed out his wide was German proving the BBC both dishonest and not doi8ng their rerseach properly); or using censorship to promote racial murder/genocide, child sexual enslavement and the dissection of living human beings (all certainly done under British government authority in Kosovo and censored).
Impartiality and honesty never being a BBC objective is the only possible way obvious lying and censoring can have "raised no issues about impartiality for the BBC or its output." Simples.
Why do you think anyone here would be impressed by what "the BBC considers"?
Presumably it only "considers" it in order to start a witch hunt - which you are obligingly joining.
I agree that the BBC should be more accountable to the public because of it's public funding. That's why I asked Andrew Montford how much of that public money he got for his appearance on Newsnight. Sadly Andrew Montford didn't feel that the BBC should be quite that open. Now after reading his latest posts I say pot meet kettle.
I repeat: All of our scientific and political institutions, and the mainstream media, have been suborned by the incompetent climate consensus. It is fact to them, to be taken for granted. It follows that those who deny the consensus are, to them, unaccountably barbarians, uncivilized idiots. Scientific defenders of the consensus in the blogosphere are insane, in that they literally cannot, will not, see the facts that disprove that consensus. I have proved this as no one else has. No part of our societies can solve this essentially revolutionary crisis by "business as usual", but that is what everyone is trying to do, even me (I am trying to communicate revolutionary new knowledge to the world--to non-scientists and scientists alike--essentially along recognized paths, even if my efforts to bridge the dogmatic chasms that divide us are not taken seriously by those inside of science, and by those who "defend science", who most need to hear and heed the evidence I could give them). The insanity among those in power and authority now seems to rise to new heights with each passing day. Of course, this means the fundamental problem is not science, nor politics. It is psychology, to wit the psychology of dogma versus fact, of belief versus reason. Our civilization is insane over what is touted as "climate science", but is not.
Hengist
Yah, er um Ok. Oh boy. Here's the thing - this is all I see you saying,
"I don't agree that an influential public funded body has issues with external alarmist influence. Oh! And another thing, I demand you take as implicitly true when this very same influential public funded body decrees that these other guys, who are anti-alarmist, are also very influential!"
Forget circularity, this is just unarguable ;)
On Climate Change BBC management is conflicted, BBC environmental reporters compromised.
At a time when the public are becoming sceptical about Climate Change the BBC have banned dissent.
That is a disconnect that will harm the standing of the corporation.
Hengist,
GWPF received a grand total of £503,302 in donations, from private individuals, in 2009/2010.
To put this in perspective the gas and electricity bill for the same year for the BBC's White City HQ was £955,646.
At the same time Greenpeace international received 61 million euros. This does not include the money their national associations in Argentina, Australia Pacific, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China Mainland, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, DR Congo, East Asia, European Unit, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, International, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malta, Mediterranean, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pacific, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Senegal, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, UK and USA received. Like the GWPF, none of the Greenpeace organisations publicised who their private donors were.
BeebGate ????
Best comment from the MoS, " If you took the money out of Global Warming there would be no Global Warming"
I completely endorse Phil Bratby's comments on BBC impatiality. For over 3 years I tried to get answers direct from Mark Thompson and, even after engaging the help of my MP Nick Harvey, failed to elicit anything other than the Party Line from various assorted lackies.
The sooner the BBC is broken up and required to make its own way in the world without the aid of the Licence Tax, the better it will be for independent and informed opinion to shine through the murk.
Stop Press:
Jeremy Clarkson in running to be BBC science editor. In a statement the no-holds-barred motormouth said:
"Since the BBC has stipulated that its new science editor need not have any scientific qualifications I have allowed myself to be put forward for the post. On Top Gear, and in my many other programs, I have shown myself to be an outstanding storyteller and journalist. My views about climate change are well known. I grilled Alistair Campbell about them. When was the last time you saw a journalist working for BBC News do that, to anyone.
I see myself as the flip side to Roger Harrabin, and in the interests of impartiality I insist the BBC hires me to restore the "balance" it so often preaches about.
I won't need a company car.
I will submit a portfolio of stories that BBC should be doing in the Science/Environment front, along with my application. As the Science editor role is also an advisory one I recommend;
No more Mike Hume, Myles Allen or Bob Ward.
No more Shukman on an ice sheet - it's so British Leyland.
Richard Black to take a course on statistics at Stow on the Wold Junior school (where my kids will teach him a thing or two."
Briwan Cox to be plunged into a black hole.
David Attenborough out to pasture.
There...I bet none of the other candidates have got anything as detailed and as impressive as that.
If they don't interview me for the job I will be claiming my £15,000 from the University of East Anglia. Thinking about it I will want £15,000 from all environmentally interested parties. This is essential because, in Harrabin's own words, it will ensure that when I come to report on them I am even more impartial than I would have been.
Another thing I will promise if I get the job. Al Gore will be my star "in a reasonably priced car."
I will also chain myself to a windmill.
I will of course contribute and offer my expertise to other areas of BBC News' output. For example I have a lot to say about the suggestion to ban smoking in cars.
Given my qualifications (especially my lack of science qualifications) I firmly expect to be granted an interview, if not fast-tracked into the post, without the need for an interview.
I am also a better broadcaster than Robert Pesto because people can (long pause) understand what I'm saying.
I am the one to put BBC news's environment and science coverage back on track. This will also save the corporation.
How hard can it be?
I second Jeremy for the post of BBC Science Editor ;-)
In conclusion Jeremy Clarkson said;
What other candidate for the role of BBC Science Editor has driven a car (and a Toyota at that) to the North Geomagnetic pole, or travelled at twice the speed of sound in mig fighter. I have personally contributed more CO2 into the atmosphere than the rest of the BBC Science and Environmental team put together driving around in their Prius's (which incidentally is my favourite car!)
What's more I bring a youthful, zesty, sexy image to BBC environmental reporting. I don't wear a wig like Shukman, am 5 years younger than Harrabin, and unlike Richard Black know that 1 + 1 = 2.
I also don't read the Guardian.
I would also, in the interests of impartiality, dump the Science Media Centre, (when Fiona Fox calls me I am never sure if she's pretending to be someone else for a disgraced, fat, Scottish MP) and replace them with the GWPF.
I would also recommend setting up a BBC Outside Broadcast on the Maldives, and a free copy of the Time Atlas of the World for all BBC Staff.
The BBC has been rabidly pro this Global warming nonsense for a decade now, therefore, in the interests of impartiality and balance I am the ideal candidate.
My referees will be;
Lord Sugar,
HRH Prince Phillip,
Lord Lawson.
Kristen Scott Thomas.
Jeremy's Press Spokesman
Would we be correct in thinking that we know you on this blog as your own spokesman??
@TerryS
Greenpeace does not accept money from companies, governments or political parties.
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/faq_old/questions-about-greenpeace-in/
Hengist
From its website. Explain which bit you don't understand. As far as naming individual donors, why is that any of your business? If you think it is then become a member and go and pester them at next year's AGM.