Bishop Hill Steve Jones and his research
Dec 27, 2013 BBC Climate: Sceptics Felicity Mellor of Imperial College has been mentioned at BH from time to time, chiefly because of her view that media coverage of science is insufficiently balanced. At a lecture at the University of Nottingham last summer she discussed the even more radical idea that there is just too much science reporting in the media, along with many other aspects of science journalism. There was also much discussion of the Jones review of the BBC's coverage of science, for which she did the underlying research.
Along the way (12:00 or thereabouts) she reveals that BBC executives tried to get the output of the report changed to make it less critical of the corporation's reliance on press releases as the source of their stories.
She also notes (28:00) the criticisms in the Jones report of "false balance", making the uncomfortable observation that in the research she did for the report she actually couldn't find much evidence of any balance at all: in only 6% of science pieces did a balancing view feature.
One could be forgiven for thinking that Jones was using the platform given him by the BBC to advance a political agenda in the face of the underlying research.
Reader Comments (62)
Ecclesiastical Uncle
One thing that must impact on the situation is the proliferation of non-jobs. I know that there was considerable devolution of duties to the colonies and a district officer who got it wrong could end up shredded or in a cooking pot - but ... we now have more staff at the FCO than when we had an empire, possibly more civvies at the MoD than when we fought a war and so on - very few of whom it strikes me have even a shred of conscience and it seems an article of faith (reinforced by evidence) that no unpleasant consequences will ensue should anybody repeatedly and willfully screw up.
My father was an Admiralty man for almost all his working life and he knows that we really need some Admiral Byng moments pour encourager les autres. "Public Servants" have gotten well and truly out of hand - a plague of selfish, dysfunctional, dishonest, incompetent idjits infest our public bodies and unless there's a cull - the whole miserable morass will collapse under it's own weight.
The extent to which public bodies are bloated is demonstrated by the comparisons with our neighbours
And back to the subject - the BBC - 28gate is how they "do business" - that I think is all one needs to know. Just a shame really that it's still something that 99% of the audience are ignorant of.
Tomo 2:53 29 December
Thanks for your link to the Inside the Environment Agency site, which I recommend highly.
Sobering stuff, when you consider the size of DECC as well.
Ecclesiastical Uncle on Dec 29, 2013 at 11:10 AM
".. she insisted that culture had to pay its way. So the accountants moved into the Beeb and started cutting programming costs. So, these days, BBC output has to be cost-effective. The first consequence of this is the pursuit of audience figures."
Cost-effectivemess and paying your way are not the same concept! Someone within the BBC 'decided' that the "pursuit of audience figures" was the goal. Not a 'Mrs T decision', but it does fit in with dumbing down the quality and 'education'!
"Next, programme quality. Extra expense to seek tip-top quality is not allowed."
Apart from J.Ross, G.Norton, excess manpower for reporting Mandela's death, Question Time in South Africa, excess manpower at Glastonbury etc etc :)
"A consequence of this, of course, is one sidedness over two sided issues, like climate change. If you want to say climate change is happening, is man-made and will cause calamities, say it, and do not waste precious funds on adding that there are some who dispute it."
You will have to explain this in more detail. What ever the cost of airing one side's views, why can't they spend the same amount on the other view and broadcast the subject half as often? The bias is political and was intentional as it played into the hands of the Socialists in power in the Labour Party, and now the Tories and Lib Dems.
I do agree with the rest of your post which I hope I can summarise here:
The public sector are under the illusion that their senior management have the same demands that the senior management in private industry have and therefore need the same remuneration. They do not understand that no matter how they screw up hospital management, patients will still arrive for treatment, money will still flow towards them to pay for staff and equipment. Any failure will result in more taxpayers money being thrown at the problem. In the Private Sector, the company goes bust, like Marconi, no matter how good 'the workers' are. And for the BBC, if their revenue is reduced dramatically, we will be half way to civil insurrection! Many of the highly paid in the Public Sector, including Politicians, QUANGO's, the BBC and the NHS appear to be able to leave one job with a good payoff and start another without pausing for breath, quite often with extra generous pensions!
Also, while the Private Sector cannot survive without customers, the Public Sector can ignore them and therefore can find that nothing distracts them from their own remuneration and rewarding their pals, without any regard to the taxpayers.
We have seen it in hospitals in Staffordshire and elsewhere, in the BBC (Jim'll Fix It, et al, 28gate, J.Rossgate, reemployment after redundancy, £100 million wasted on a failed digital media project, etc etc), MOD spending on undeliverables, school exams getting easier, the FSA doing SFA and Social Services, children's deaths and Sharon Shoesmith's awarded damages. The list goes on!
And you want to blame Mrs T for starting it when the fight to destroy Grammar Schools was in full swing in the Sixties!
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
Yes, tomo and Hamish
Over recent days I was interested to know what parts of my domicile were expected to flood, so I visited my local council website. This referred me to the Environmental Agency website. (Pass the buck!) The EA site had the usual professional flood control info- that the river was at 1.X meters, the average was 0.Y meters and the like.
So what did this mean? All this was very reminiscent of a development project that I had been part of in my working days. Then, the flood control people produced similar data but it was clear that my question whether it meant that this or that part of the development area would flood was unanswerable and regarded as unfair. So, thus educated, I looked no further at the EA site.
So the information the EA come up with is for professional eyes only, and the professionals are unable to translate it into data of practical use.
So why did the powers that be fund the flood control experts in my development project and why is the EA so large?
There are some questions governments cannot answer and we shouldn't allow ourselves to be persuaded to let them use development or tax funds to pretend they can.
@Robert Christopher
But that someone, if there was a single someone, was John Birt. And Birt was the creature of Thatcher's pressure on the BBC.
"But that someone, if there was a single someone, was John Birt. And Birt was the creature of Thatcher's pressure on the BBC."
Could it be that MT would have liked to see the BBC privatised? If so, getting the ratings up would be an important first step towards breaking it up and selling it off. I suppose that had that actually occurred, we wouldn't be having this discussion now.
I feel sorry for anyone with the same name as Steve Jones...hold on.
@Stonyground
AFAIK the situation was this: Thatcher did indeed like the idea of privatising or breaking up the BBC in some way, but doing so would have been far from straightforward, while the BBC saw Birtism as two-front strategy to prevent it: placate the Conservatives (with the outsourcing, internal-marketry and MBA-speak) and at the same time shore up its popularity with the voting public (hence the focus on ratings and being ever-so-relatable). Arguably the result was a worst of both worlds in some ways.
That said, I wouldn't firmly assume that the BBC's climate coverage would be that much more friendly to lukewarmers today had it been privatised. The example of, say, US television, or UK print media, or for that matter UK political parties suggests otherwise.
There is such a thing as false balance. In one of the first BBC news items on the latest IPCC publication (AR5 physical science summary), I was quite shocked to see Andrew Montford being interviewed, I suppose to provide "balance". However, uninformed opinions from unqualified individuals on highly technical subjects have no place in media reports on scientific research and are extremely misleading for the audience.
Noel,
Quite right BUT the BBC continue to go to the uninformed and unqualified in the form of Steven Jones for opinion on the climate.
Mailman
Dec 31, 2013 at 4:19 PM | Noel
A bit like asking a railway engineer to lead the world's 'authority' on climate change.
I use good old fashioned common sense....Just ask the BBC to list all programmes covering AGW and request the names of the presenters and interviewees.
By analysing the information given it will soon become apparent that the BBC have at no time attempted to give a balanced view.
Only Prof Philip Stott has been given any real air time and he was removed after complaints from the likes of Hulme and Sharp.