Bishop Hill BBC's secret register of interests
Dec 11, 2011 BBC Interesting story in the Mail on Sunday, which once again touches upon Roger Harrabin and CMEP.
MPs have demanded that the BBC reveals details of all commercial deals its journalists have with other organisations, amid fears of an increasing number of conflicts of interest affecting their work.
The Corporation is under pressure following The Mail on Sunday’s disclosure two weeks ago that senior BBC journalist Roger Harrabin accepted £15,000 in grants from the University of East Anglia, which was at the heart of the ‘Climategate’ scandal, and then reported on the story without declaring this interest to viewers.
Under BBC rules, employees must register shareholdings, outside corporate work, voluntary positions, book contracts and relevant interests of family members and partners. But the BBC has refused to make public details of the register, despite a Freedom of Information request from this newspaper.
For the avoidance of doubt, there is no suggestion that Harrabin has profited personally from his work on the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme, but the payments from the University of East Anglia were clearly relevant to his journalistic independence, and of course the work of CMEP makes a nonsense of the whole idea of the BBC having any integrity.
The idea that their register of journalists' interests should be a secret document is so absurd as almost to defy belief.
Reader Comments (43)
Of course the BBC won't reveal its journalists' interests, any more than the Catholic church will reveal its priests interests ......
Agreed. But in debating with the Beeb there are two levels of absurdity. Even if it could be argued that it was a breach of personal privacy for the whole register to be published (and I don't think it reasonably can be) there is no possible justification for Harrabin not to declare the £15,000 to CMEP when he reports on Climategate. This should be mandatory.
As it happens I think Roger did OK in one or two early moments with Phil Jones and others after 17 Nov 09. But whether one agrees or not (and however bad or mediocre his other coverage has been) the principle should be quite clear: the CMEP role and the donations from UEA should have been made known to everyone listening to Harrabin throughout.
Richard Drake actual Harrabin sat on climategate information until its was imp[possible not to cover it , while the BBC coverage of climategate 2 has been minimal. Overall the BBC is a hard core supporter of the AGW thoery its prophets in the 'Team' and its high temple the IPCC , which is why its journalists say virtual nothing about the poor behavior of these organizations. Like to many 'journalists' they given this set of people a free pass they would never give to others , such as those that work in Nuclear or GM where they be knocking each other down in the rush to report such poor practice .
If you look at who has actual exposed and explored the issues surrounding the AGW scare ,it is not the BBC or the broadsheets, its tends to be web sites like this.
KnR, you're entitled to your opinion but I wonder if we can agree on some facts. How long exactly are you saying that 'Harrabin sat on climategate information until it was impossible not to cover it'? When do you claim he got it? When did he first write about it?
Good for the people of Britain in pushing open this particular little abscess. It has festered more than long enough.
My bet is it will turn out the corruption has become systemic, and is not isolated to climate science at all.
These media monsters of privateering culture and tax payer funded capital are bad whether it is Pravda, ABC CBC, NPR or the BBC.
They are prone to corruption from their very founding.
I am not sure of how to reform the obviously corrupt private media, but their is a cure for publicly funded media that at least ends the wastage of tax payer resources: End the government subsidies. Let them sink or swim on their own.
Government subsidized media is a old relic of the days when radio was a new and unknown medium.
Those days are long past, and the relic is now a rancid parody.
Richard - iirc Harrabin did sit on Climategate1 for at least a few days - the story went round the blogs on the 17th but Harrabin's first report was not until Nov 21st. This is confirmed by Paul Hudson who apparently tipped off his BBC colleagues soon after the emails were in the wild. Re-reading Harrabin's report just confirms his lack of impartiality - and just how much he had gone native with the greens in CRU. If the BBC had any integrity he would have been sacked by now.
What is more important....
Roger Harrabin was also on the Advisory Board of the UEA Tyndall Centre.!!
Whilst working for BBC, whilst receiving funding, whilst running seminars to push Tyndall UEA media agenda. So totally conflicted, with respect to environment reporting. Let alone the climstegste emails, when interviewing anybody from UEA, etc
What will it take for Mr Harrabin to be sacked? And I mean sacked,not allowed to resign, which seems to be the usual get out these days.
While we are about it how about another look at the BBC Pension Fund ?
http://climateresearchnews.com/2010/02/bbc-pension-funds-linked-to-climate-policy/
http://thesequal.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=climate&action=print&thread=262
No conflict here. Shurely shome mishtake. /sarc off
Richard Drake Harrabin sat the e-mails for as long has he could , his not the only one the Guardian did the same , its not unusual in that something that clashes with the editorial line of the reporters ideological outlook is kicked into the long grass in the hope that it 'goes away' only for fear of others releasing the information and so them 'missing out ' driving them to having to cover it in some way.
Don't ever think that being 'dirty' does not mean that can't be good at their job , these guys know how to play the game very well,l mostly, and Harrabin is no fool.
KnR: You haven't answered my questions but lapogus has so ...
lapogus: Although the release was on my birthday, 17th November, even Anthony Watts took quite a while to publicise it, for fear it wasn't genuine. The 21st wasn't that late in the day for an outfit like the BBC. Lucia and Steve Mosher were the first to go public with the emails and that wasn't until 19th:
I think it's silly to make much of a gap of just two days between the very first bloggers and Harrabin of the Beeb in such an uncertain situation. But I do agree fully that Harrabin's role with CMEP and on the advisary board for the Tyndall Centre (thanks Barry) and the fact that money had come from UEA for CMEP should have been declared from the outset. And I also agree that BBC coverage has been far from balanced and far from incisive, for instance on the Climategate inquiries. It's vital they do better or that there are root and branch reforms to Auntie, as Antony Jay argues.
and don't get me started on 'Strictly'
"These media monsters of privateering culture and tax payer funded capital are bad whether it is Pravda, ABC CBC, NPR or the BBC.
They are prone to corruption from their very founding"
I think the News Of The World has been shown to be one of the most corrupt Newspapers in modern time - not taxpayer funded - and until its closure it had the largest circulation of any Sunday Newspaper in the UK.
And then we have the Daily Mail, (circulation over 2 million), who use the GWPF five times more than any other source for information on climate change, yup, there's a balanced unbiased view for you.
Compared to these guys, the BBC is snowy white and impartial.
Lets not forget the sodding obvious stench at the BBC, Chairman Chris Patten had been a commissioner in the EU from 2000-2004, He receives a pension from this which has tied to it conditions that he cant say anything detrimental about the EU or his pension will be stopped hence their pro EU stance,
Also as mentioned their pension fund is heavily tied into the carbon trading market, Then just for good measure he also introduced, and steered through Parliament, the major legislation that became the Environmental Protection Act 1990.
It appears that lapogus is referring to the myth that the BBC were given a copy of the emails some weeks in advance based on a misinterpretation of what Paul Hudson actually says. This misinterpretation has been used by BBC critics for BBC bashing but in this instance the criticism is unreasonable.
Paul Hudson was actually stating that be believed the released emails were genuine because he had been previously provided a copy of an email chain by a collegue that then turned up in the release.
You need to read Hudsons link because he clearly stated he had the emails a week before release and that he passed them
On to Harribin and others (probably black).
Given what we have seen I would suspect that Harribin got in touch with "the team" to ask how he should handle the story.
Second, in harribins earlier link we see the classic BBC undermining technique in action, mention the sceptics are funded by "business interests" dhole masking absolutely no mention that the clowns at real climate are implicated in the scandal. Classic BBC in action and is a standard technique of theirs to cast doubt on the veracity of someone or a group without coming out and just saying so.
Mailman
A link to the Paul Hudson blog regarding when he received the climategate emails.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/11/climategate-cru-hacked-into-an.shtml
"I will add comment on this page as soon as I can free up some time. But I will in the meantime answer the question regarding the chain of e-mails which you have been commenting about on my blog, which can be seen here, and whether they are genuine or part of an elaborate hoax.
I was forwarded the chain of e-mails on the 12th October, which are comments from some of the worlds leading climate scientists written as a direct result of my article 'whatever happened to global warming'. The e-mails released on the internet as a result of CRU being hacked into are identical to the ones I was forwarded and read at the time and so, as far as l can see, they are authentic. "
He meant that he had the chain of emails that referred to him. Why? Because the Hockey Team had forwarded it to him so he could see what a poor opinion they held of him. Hudson was not referring to the full CG1 database of emails.
See his very next blog post
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/11/climategate-what-next.shtml
@Louise
I have a choice whether to buy the Daily Mail or not.
There is no choice on whether to pay the BBC. They take my money and use it for their own propaganda purposes.
The BBC has done far more damage to this country than any newspaper.
Mailman - I can see you believe in the myth. I have also recently seen Tim Ball and Pointman make the same mistake. There are links to both blog posts by Paul Hudson here.
The second post linked by both lapogus and Andrew says the following
"As you may know, some of the e-mails that were released last week directly involved me and one of my previous blogs, 'Whatever happened to global warming ?'
These took the form of complaints about its content, and I was copied in to them at the time. Complaints and criticisms of output are an every day part of life, and as such were nothing out of the ordinary. However I felt that seeing there was an ongoing debate as to the authenticity of the hacked e-mails, I was duty bound to point out that as I had read the original e-mails, then at least these were authentic, although of course I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the others."
Dec 11, 2011 at 8:40 PM | clivere
Quite - it was the rather unfortunate wording used by Paul in his blog that led to much of the confusion. However I seen to remember that the BBC at the time, rather than issuing a clarification and explaining that Paul had only been copied in on one particular chain of mails in which he was copied, stated they would launch an investigation - this to me seemed rather to be further obfuscation and an attempt to distract from the real culprits which were Harrabin and Black.
There can be no doubt that the BBC sat on the Climategate story for as long as they could - witness Roger Black's blog for example -comments were blocked for three days whilst the BBC decided what to do on the story (oddly hypocritical as several commentators pointed out - they had been very eager to publicise hacked emails giving lists of BNP members even going so far as filming outside one BNP member's front door).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2009/11/copenhagen_countdown_17_days.html
The public clamour was so great about the biased BBC coverage that BBC Newswatch did an item on it (unfortunatley no longer available)
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/4/24/bbc-science-coverage.html
Marion - thanks - I am quite happy that there are plenty of issues where the BBC can legitimately be accused of bias on climate related items as illustrated by this weeks Booker report. However I dont like seeing criticism which is unreasonable or misconceived because that will distract from the valid criticism.
Re :Dec 11, 2011 at 8:27 PM | David Jones
"@Louise
I have a choice whether to buy the Daily Mail or not.
There is no choice on whether to pay the BBC. They take my money and use it for their own propaganda purposes.
The BBC has done far more damage to this country than any newspaper."
============================================================
Totally agree David. And the Daily Mail has done many excellent articles on the effect of the CAGW alarmism.
This one for example on the effects on China.
"In China, the true cost of Britain's clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html
The very sort of in depth coverage the BBC should have given the subject, yet this is the sort of thing we get from the BBC
In the programme "Are we doomed by Democracy" the analysis programme on BBC Radio 4 environmentalists were suggesting that they were somewhat envious of China because of the lack of democracy there!!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ethicalman/2010/05/are_we_doomed_by_democracy.html
Froggy, maybe of interest: Chris Patten, Chairman of the BBC Trust (2011–present) and European Commissioner for Enlargement (2000 to 2004), was an attendee at the power elite Bilderberg meeting (2007).
Exactly right. The "Paul Hudson had all the emails before 17th Nov 09" theory has so been convincingly debunked from the earliest days that its persistence is either a reminder of human stupidity, which Einstein told us never to underestimate, or a deliberate attempt to make sceptics look stupid, using false pseudonymous actors or sockpuppets.
But nobody would go to such lengths to make sceptics to look stupid, would they?
Re: Dec 11, 2011 at 10:48 PM | Richard Drake
Your comment
"But nobody would go to such lengths to make sceptics to look stupid, would they?"
brought to mind this spoof site -
http://theclimatescum.blogspot.com/2011/08/woods-mashes-mashey.html
I somehow doubt that many sceptics would be fooled however John Mashey was -
see comments 27 - 29 here.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/john_mashey_replies_to_peter_w.php
He had listed the site in a complaint about how popular Woods articles in CHE on climate alarmism had been and blamed the numbers of supportive comments on links from sceptic blogs.
'Compared to these guys, the BBC is snowy white and impartial.
Dec 11, 2011 at 7:07 PM Louise '
Only to those of your persuasion Louise, but certainly not to anyone who isn't a paid up agw cult member and resident-activist-on-shift. And as so many people have already said, none of us have any choice as to whether we buy the lies or not.
@ clivere - "It appears that lapogus is referring to the myth that the BBC were given a copy of the emails some weeks in advance based on a misinterpretation of what Paul Hudson actually says. This misinterpretation has been used by BBC critics for BBC bashing but in this instance the criticism is unreasonable."
Just to make clear at no point did I state / imply / -re-assert the myth that Hudson or the BBC was given a copy of the Climategate emails before the 17th. I merely re-stated what Hudson wrote - i.e. he was aware of the release (on the 17th), but was too busy to give them the attention they deserved, so informed his BBC colleagues, i.e. Harrabin (and Black I assume) so they could cover the story.
@ Richard - sorry, climategate1 seems so long ago now, I assumed that the emails hit the blogs soon after their release on the 17th. I mainly frequented WUWT in those days and recall that Anthony was on a long flight and CTM was at the helm when the emails broke. Either way if it wasn't until the 19th that the emails and Harry's fudge-factor had hit the blogs Harrabin still took another two days to put out his damage limitation exercise on the 21st. btw - I meant to but never got round to commending you for what you wrote about 911 on one of the threads here a month or so ago.
RichieP:
We don't buy them - but we do have to pay :)
lapogus:
Did I? I forget these things :) For your interest, I was partly thinking about 9/11 when I wrote this on Climate Audit on 13 Jan 10:
"The ‘BBC red herring’ school of damage limitation" includes for me the claim that the BBC reported the collapse of World Trade Center building 7 some minutes before the event happened and attaches enormous significance to this. The claim, which proves an endless rabbit-hole from which one never emerges, as far as I can see, detracts from the much more central question of how and why the building came down so fast in the late afternoon of 9/11, when it hadn't been hit by a plane in the morning, like the two towers. I'm not saying that reasonable people can't disagree on the physics of the collapse but it is for me is the crucial argument. I have learned to be suspicious of red herrings that are continuously raised, mainly by pseudonymous actors, in such highly-charged areas and lead the reader to dismiss a group with otherwise sensible questions.
Not least the reader inside the BBC. There are reasons for the smugness we often detect when they deal with climate sceptics - and some of it may be due to such cleverness on the part of unknown actors, actors that cannot act in the light, because it will destroy everything they stand for. But, as I said originally, it may just be stupidity. Either way, the smugness has its reasons. We should remove every excuse we can.
i will always add my bit when Paul Hudson and Climategate 1 is brought up.
who has seen the "chain of emails" Hudson received?
no emails in Climategate 1 and Climategate 2 are sent to or copied to Paul Hudson.
why do sceptics insist on evidence for CAGW, yet are perfectly happy not to require evidence from the BBC as to exactly which emails Hudson received in October 2009?
as whatever Hudson received related to his "whatever happened to global warming?" piece, which comes up in the Climategate emails, why didn't any inquiry require that bbc produce the Hudson "chain of emails"?
Louise,
Notice I never used the term 'impartial'. I speak specifically of the corrupting influence of tax payer funds supporting media that inevitably supports one political line.
I don't care if a private org has an opinion and pushes it.
I care if I am forced to pay for a public org that pushes one set of policies.
The difference is vast.
Dec 11, 2011 at 7:07 PM | Louise........Bish, I smell a proxy server change of I.P.!
Richard D - yes, I agree that the BBC's premature announcement of the collapse of WTC7 is circumstantial and distracts from the much more solid work of for example Prof Jones, Prof Neils Harrit, David Chandler and Gordon Ross. But the BBC making the announcement and giving an explanation for the collapse 25 minutes in advance of the event was never-the-less quite remarkable. Especially since it took 8 years for NIST to come up with their ludicrous [and FOI exempt computer model] explanation, (which was then ridiculed by Chandler in a matter of weeks). It taught me never again to trust anything which comes out of a BBC news room - I suspect that the news room staff were being told what to say that day - but either way they are puppets or gullible fools (or both).
I think the News Of The World has been shown to be one of the most corrupt Newspapers in modern time - not taxpayer funded - and until its closure it had the largest circulation of any Sunday Newspaper in the UK.
The most arduous and thankless job of a climate skeptic is sometimes having to rub shoulders with genuine cranks.
The only ones I haven't come across in climate skeptic blogs so far are those who believe in alien abductions, fake moon landings, Yeti and Loch Ness Monster.
Re: Dec 12, 2011 at 4:14 AM | pat
I've always had a lot of sympathy for Paul Hudson. His 'What Happened to Global Warming' article was a refreshing change from the usual hype and hysteria from the 'settled science' brigade.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8299079.stm
There was no doubt the BBC were coming under a lot of pressure from alarmist bloggers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/08/bbc_blog_bully/
This was something however which Roger Black tried to deny and incredibly say it was the other way round (despite the evidence already seen in the Climategate mails)
"'Warmist' attack smacks of 'sceptical' intolerance"
Richard Black | 16:42 UK time, Wednesday, 22 September 2010
"It seems that something new, and not altogether welcome, may be happening in the politicking over climate change. I have written before of the orchestrated villification that comes the way of climate scientists from some people and organisations who are unconvinced of the case for human-induced climate change - "sceptics", "deniers", as you wish.
Journalists, including your humble correspondent, receive our fair share too.
This week, for the first time, I am seeing the same pattern from their opponents."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/09/something_new_and_not_altogeth.html
A disgracefully dishonest piece especially with the evidence already provided by Climategate 1 but typical of BBC propaganda.
The 'inquiries' wre just as bad and I've become increasingly frustrated at the blatant conflicts of interest that now seem to be accepted as the norm in the 'establishment'.
Pat - I believe there were 10 emails released for CG1 that addressed the original Paul Hudson blog.
1255318331.txt
1255352257.txt
1255352444.txt
1255496484.txt
1255523796.txt
1255530325.txt
1255532032.txt
1255550975.txt
1255553034.txt
1255558867.txt
They got a lot of attention particularly because of the inclusion of the Kevin Trenberth statement "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't"
There is also this statement by Mike Mann which dates to 12 Oct and fits in with the statement by Paul Hudson that he was forwarded the emails on the 12th Oct.
"extremely disappointing to see something like this appear on BBC. its particularly odd,
since climate is usually Richard Black's beat at BBC (and he does a great job). from
what I can tell, this guy was formerly a weather person at the Met Office.
We may do something about this on RealClimate, but meanwhile it might be appropriate for
the Met Office to have a say about this, I might ask Richard Black what's up here?"
If Mike Mann asked Richard Black to intervene then we would not expect to see Paul Hudson on the distribution lists of the emails between "team" members. It is also possible that someone else sent them to him eg a collegue of Richard Black, We dont know who actually forwarded the email chain to Paul Hudson but this is a minor loose end.
lapogus - the Mosher Timeline post linked by Richard Drake still stands up as a reasonable starting point for the timeline of events during the release. There are other points of detail that could usefully be added such as the release of the data on Roman Ms blog.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/01/12/the-mosher-timeline/
The emails first became widely known to the public on the afternoon of the 19th Nov US time or early evening in the UK. I dont believe Paul Hudson has ever stated he was aware of the emails on the 17th Nov.
My recollection is that with the possible exception of the Guardian the MSM coverage of CG1 was minimal across the board at first. I will accept that the BBC along with others were not in a rush to address CG1.
clivere:
I too can accept that! Good summary.
lapogus:
For a number of years I've been interested, as a software guy, how the abuse of software models without full transparency - full source code, test data and starting conditions for key results - is central to the two very different subjects: AGW and the collapses on 9/11. For WTC7 models not to be inspectable in any way hardly inspires confidence.
clivere -
for a moment i thought u were suggesting those emails addressed or copied hudson. i'm well aware of those which relate to Hudson's article, but i still ask, why hasn't BBC published those Hudson saw on 12 October? why didn't the Inquiries demand BBC produce them and explain who sent them to or forwarded them to Hudson? why was Hudson gagged?
there has been so much written about the public and others misinterpreting "hide the decline" as regards Michael Mann's hockey stick but, for the lay person (myself included), "hiding the decline" in the temperature record compared to CAGW PREDICTIONS WAS MORE EASILY UNDERSTOOD. therefore, Hudson's article "whatever happened to global warming?" was perhaps the first real eye-opener for former CAGW believers like myself.
Pat - ok - I understand a bit more where you are coming from. I have long accepted that the BBC is biased and rarely bother watching the BBC these days except for sporting events.
I am still waiting for the breakthrough where the BBC bias on climate change can be sufficiently demonstrated to be against the public interest to the extent that a level of corrective action is forced on them. For that to happen it will probably require major embarrassment to their political support in the establishment.
Whilst we may have some background missing about how the BBC handled the "Paul Hudson complaint" revealed by Climategate I dont see it as being a breakthrough issue myself
clivere -
no-one is saying it is a "breakthrough" issue. however, when Climategate broke in November 2009, if as much attention had been paid to hudson's article "whatever happened to global warming?" as was paid to Mann's hockey stick, i do believe the public would have more easily understood the scam. quite simply, the predictions were shown to be FALSE.