Monday
Dec302013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Friends
An interesting bit of intelligence from a correspondent: Steve Jones is a close friend of Chris Huhne's.
So when the BBC were casting around for someone to look at impartiality in the BBC's science output they picked a man whose wife worked for the BBC and who was pals with the deep-green climate change secretary of the time. I guess he ticked every box.
Interesting.
Reader Comments (11)
Prof Jones owes his media profile, and his wealth, directly to the BBC. He is their man or nothing (like Brian Cox). They plucked him from obscurity (a rare appearance on Science Now) and gave him the 1990 Reith Lectures, then on radio. 'The Language of the Genes' was the result and the book deals followed and a very lucrative regular column in the Telegraph (or rather a regular rather boring column). The BBC own him. Jones is anything but impartial, and as we have seen, knows nothing about the climate debate or about journalism. He is not even a very good scientist but then again, most scientists aren't. He was therefore an ideal candidate for an 'independent' review by a controlling BBC management. But even they, as we see in Mellor's lecture, could not spin away the central fact about BBC science journalism - that 75% of it is a straight lift from press releases.
What with this and 28Gate the BBC is quite a piece of work isn't it?
Chris Huhne: The proven liar.
I usually scan the Guardian to see what the "Alternative" view of the world is. I'm finding it more & more difficult each day as I see Huhne's handsome face looking out at me promulgating another utterly unbelievable view of the world. Shameless.
Not really , it was always going to be a 'safe pair hands ' the BBC went for , after the infamous '28 meeting ' the policy for covering AGW has been sent due 'alarmist' for the next few years .
Like the other cheek of the same arse , the Guardian , it will take a change in key personal before you see change towards honest coverage of this subject .
You just have to accept that for this area if you want to see balance and good journalism you will need to look in other places.
It seems that this Professor is as mundane as his namesake at UEA.
Snail expert and a jail expert.
It seems to me as though they both bought copies of "Self Esteem for Dummies".
On a point of terminology: IIRC the term 'deep green' is usually taken to be synonymous with 'deep-ecology'/'deep ecologist'. I doubt that ex-City gent Huhne really passes muster as a deep-ecology "biocentrist", certainly not in the estimation of the deep Greens themselves.
Anonym 12:07 30 Dec
Quite right: to any self-respecting "deep green", the best use for Chris Huhne would be as mulch on the vegetable patch (along with the rest of us). But only after his usefulness as an idiot has been exhausted.
I wonder what little points-and-savile-like favours Huhne and the BBC have over Jones? Given that Jones chose not to include key information provided by his researcher in the report - perhaps the BBC need another report. Is the chap recently involved with the COOP bank available?
BBC suck up to a then government minister .Got to protect the license fee some how