Monday
Nov182013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Watts out
Nov 18, 2013 BBC 
The word on the street is that BBC Newsnight is to dispense with the role of science editor, putting long-term occupant Susan Watts out of a job. I never saw her as the identikit BBC green (she invited me to appear on the programme after all) so I don't particularly view her departure as a step forward.
The imperatives of the bureaucratic enterprise lead to some very interesting decisions. In these hard times, it's fascinating to see what and who the BBC sees as important and worthy of retention, and what and who is seen as dispensable.
Reader Comments (39)
According to the Sunday Times yesterday, Gavin Esler is also leaving because he is upset at the ravaging of Newsnight by Ian Katz. There may be a theme that it is the serious journalists which seem to be leaving the programme, with the rather mysterious comic make overs of Paxo and Wark to throw in the mix. Rather sad.
Perhaps she insisted that climate reports had some basis in science.
It's rather revealing of the BBC mindset that in response to criticism that its news is both left-wing and dumbed down, its response is to appoint new editor of the flagship news programme, Newsnight, who is a senior Guardian apparatchik and has already taken the program downmarket.
You might almost think that the BBC was sticking two gigantic fingers up to its critics.
If true this is not surprising as she has a physics degree which is quite out of place in the BBC demographic. I shall miss her because whenever she was presenting I never felt like throwing a brick through the screen or shouting obscenities at the programme (feelings which have become much more frequent recently).
She was too alarmist for me. Never let the facts get in the way of a good scare story and always looking for a bandwagon to jump on. Look what she did to Peter Lilly!
Slightly OT but the Today programme was yet again running a story on the poor Greenpeace hostages being held by nasty Russia. I expect the Beeb will nominate them for a Nobel prize soon.
Is it just me or does the BBC bias in all its forms seem to have got worse and more blatant since its new Director General took over?
- The 2 New Newsnight people Chris Cook, currently executive comment editor of the Financial Times, joins the programme as Policy Editor.
David Grossman, currently the show's political correspondent, becomes Technology Editor.
- plus Laura Kuenssberg, currently Business Editor of ITV News, will be joining BBC Newsnight as Chief Correspondent and will regularly present the programme.
(she tweeted she'd film a report about an electricity company abandoning plans to construct 6 of it's 7 new plants ..did it end up not being shown ?)
Up till now, the only area where the BBC hadn’t outsourced it’s programming has been news. It shows in the scheduling. Endless bought in stuff and/or repeats, intersected with news programmes in various disguises. They’re on the increase, which is daft because there’s only so much demand for news and with a strictly biased output their potential audience is decimated anyway.
I wonder how they can justify so much middle management when there is so little left to manage?
I lost what little confidence I had in Watts/Newsnight when she announced that 'scientists have calculated that President Obama has four years to save the planet'.
For an idea of what the BBC doesn't do any more look at its pages on commissioning. Apparently they ordered 20,000 hours of TV last year. About 50hrs a day... didn't think there were that many hours when you add in repeats.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/briefs/tv/browse-by-genre/
Those hours would have inluded the tribute to Jimmy Savile and the programme alerting us to his crimes. Remind me. which one did they show in the end?
Its come to something if the BBC has ejected Watts because they don't consider her alarmist enough. I agree with another commenter that the BBC has become even more biased recently since Hall was installed at the top. Perhaps the plebs at the BBC are testing how far they can go before there's any attempt to reign them in.
I'm afraid it's looking as if Hall may be a dud.
stewgreen - yes, that report did get broadcast - although it was pretty short and didn't go into detail about what sort of power station that particular company was wanting to build.. (STORs..?) Also in the same news story was an interview with a despondent-looking solar park developer standing in front of his half-finished installation (cloud cover: 100%) - complaining about people being 'reluctant to invest'...
The Guardian has the story.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/nov/18/newsnight-roles-redundant-bbc?CMP=twt_fd
Perhaps the Guardian told its broadcast arm to beef up the programme with more lefty alarmists?
She really is no loss. She is a committed warmist and her reports have been less than objective. Her favourite and only "go-to guy" for anything about the "Melting Arctic" is Peter Wadhams, whose predictions have been woefully wrong time after time. His submarine data from 1998-2000 is still quoted as fact, yet was soundly de-bunked a couple of years later. Despite passing on correct information to her, she still has always followed the company line, as here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/9483790.stm
Her Physics degree is from Imperial College where Brian Hoskins hosts "Grantham 2", (Grantham 1 is at LSE with Stern). Quite likely she gets her briefings from Bob Ward.
I guess we should wait what the alternative arrangements will be, though I'm not hopeful yet.
In recent days the appearance of anti-CO2 green propaganda on the website has come with the same frequency as a lab-rat pressing the lever in a heroin self-administration experiment. When the drug is withdrawn and substituted by placebo, the lever-pressing rate becomes frantic.
One way to see this is that the BBC is simply confirming what has long been apparent: They do not actually report science, so why waste money on an editor?
Maybe they got her confused with Anthony Watts...
On the subject of the Philippines typhoon, I watched in growing frustration at one of the lady anchors on BBC News interviewing a spokesman from Oxfam, having of course opened the item with the view that 'climate change' was the reason for the typhoon and its ferocity. The Oxfam man was of course only too willing to agree with that particular stance. The BBC lady did try, rather meekly, to offer the opinion that, in fact, the number and strength of typhoons inrecent times was nothing out of the ordinary, which of course the Oxfam man flatly denied.
You can never get past first base, can you..?
Oh come on people. The BBC stopped reporting the actual news decades ago. What they report no days is merely their opinion dresses up as the news.
Mailman
@Schrodinger's Cat : has anyone ever checked on the correlation between what is published in 'The Graun' today and BBC news tomorrow?
Don't forget that you can express your opinion on the BBC news and current affairs programmes here. It won't make any difference though.
Ben - 'I lost what little confidence I had in Watts/Newsnight when she announced that 'scientists have calculated that President Obama has four years to save the planet'.
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Actually, thanks to Tony Newbury (at least the point I picked up on it) confidence in Ms. Watts and Newsnight was already a bit shaky, also surrounding President Obama, and his Inauguration Address, following this post (maybe the same one you and others cite...no time to go through and check), which started to unravel (the link to Tony's blog at No. 21 halfway in the comments, many others of which make for entertaining reading given what was known then about BBC efforts in this arena vs. those now. No 25. may be familiar):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/susanwatts/2009/01/restoring_science_to_its_right.html
The then editor was even moved to respond, and probably made what was bad a farce, especially for BBC integrity.
I would have mourned the loss of one of the few actual science qualified 'reporters' on the BBC roster, but honestly her body of work suggests she was aware more what got through the upper ties of BBC management without waves.
@Sherlock1 thanks for that info
@FarleyR : Yep BBC news is just cut and pasted from Guardian (who seem to do the hard work of making it up)
- no doubt an job ad will appear soon in the Guardian job pages : wanted BBC Newsnight head& deputyhead of Activism
@dennisa please give Bob Ward his full title : Bob Ward (Climate Fr__d)
@Phillip Bratby Yep they did reply on the Johanna Haigh prog compaint
- they didn't reply to my two formal complaints about the BBC Feedback travesty (1 on legal grounds of defamation of Prof Bob Carter & skeptics etc. , 2nd on grounds BBC broke own editorial guidelines : give guests proper title & mention conflict of interests etc.) Time for next action
pic Germany's 10 new coal plants
'Don't forget that you can express your opinion on the BBC news and current affairs programmes here. It won't make any difference though.'
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What may offer more chance of difference is this one, which while still being within the public sector family at least is not hidden behind the BBC's very own, FoI-exempted walls:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/culture-media-and-sport-committee/news/131022-future-of-the-bbc-tor/
This was a nice piece of BBC news work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFPJYtvtHaQ. In an effort to start a new blood bath, the BBC accidentally broadcast the same video footage with two different, but both supposedly recorded live, sound tracks.
Depending on the effect required in a given segment, the 'live' interviewee mentions either napalm or chemical weapons.
Trying to drum up support for military intervention (which is blatantly what this Syrian news/propaganda was doing) is simply criminal.
ZT BBC Credibilty not good
BUT Syrian electronic Army have faked such stuff before
Susan must now be in a great position to write an account of how the BBC actually concocts its "scientific" coverage.
I wonder if the BBC has perhaps realised this and placed a gagging order on her.
Apropos Bob Ward, I always regard the '_w' in his twitter handle as redundant (i.e. surplus to requirements, better dropped). No longer PC, I know, but there you go ...
Susan Watts, let us not forget, presented us with the manufactured Obama quote when he didn't present the desired warmist sound bite:
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=147&cp=all
"It would seem that someone at the BBC had taken the trouble to splice the tape so that half a sentence from paragraph 16 of the inauguration speech was joined on to half a sentence from paragraph 22, and this apparently continuous sound bite was completed by returning to paragraph 16 again to lift another complete sentence.
Susan Watts then started her report by saying:
President Obama couldn’t have been clearer today. And for most scientists his vote of confidence would not have come a moment too soon...."
Phillip, thanks for the reminder. I have given BBC news my opinion of the dumping of the Newsnight Science editor, and my opinion on the science coverage provided by Harrabin Shukman and Mcgrath.
Susan Watts said in her last twitter message:
"Many thanks for msgs of support, public and private, much appreciated. Like the jokes and the sincerity. Difficult times. More to come out."
So I wonder if she has more beans to spill?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/7841946.stm
Poor cow she slavishly towed the BBC Environmentalist party line and she still got purged.
"Four years for President Obama to save the world" check out the date 2009
Many thanks to those who gave details of the two different surveys about the BBC. They should keep me busy for a while.
I agree that they will not make much difference, but at least third parties are involved, unlike the useless BBC complaints procedure where some eejit replies with a lot of waffle that has zero connection with what you wrote.
Tue 26th London :Fracking Debate : Conway Hall 7-10pm Rationalist Parliament
I put details on the discussion page
prebook £5 - website says only 57 tickets left ..I wonder if true ..only if they are using the small room I guess
@stewgreen
If you watch the video you'll see that the BBC faked the sound track on at least one occasion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFPJYtvtHaQ
This was done by the BBC - nobody else.
My Internet Explorer is failing to comnnect to Bishop Hill on about 50% of attempts. Anyone else having trouble?
EM
Try Firefox. I gave up using IE years ago and have never regretted it. I also tried Chrome but was never happy with it, probably because of some sort of built-in antipathy to Google which appears to be intent on taking over the world.
(Yes, I know Microsoft does as well but Gates has always been more subtle about it!)
Agree with many on here regarding Ms. Watts. During her tenure I cannot remember her presenting anything other than the party BBC line, which was distinctly Harrabinesque. Surely if she had been concerned with offering a neutral, impartial approach to the most contentious scientific subject of the last 10 years, she would have interviewed Lindzen, or Svensmark, or Shaviv or any other of 'the cause' dissenters, if only to give viewers unfamiliar with climate science the sort of balance that would have Prof. Steve Jones choking on his green tea, and a reasoned alternative to the clap-trap spouted ad infinitum, and uncriticised or questioned by any BBC science editor.
Watts sacking connected to rationality on Haiyan ?
Nov 12 Bish reports Media makes full mileage of Haiyan to sell CO2 causes bad weather hype except Newsnight which reports moere plausible stuff like sticking to the Philippines Met office lower windspeeds of 235Kph instead of the much higher 235mph JWTC published estimate.
- Then on Nov 18th we hear she's been fired.
.... and what's worse is almost unique that she has a Physics Degree
... in a BBC that prefers journalists who know nothing about science and so will produce more hyperbole compared to a more measured analysis the science literate would provide.