The BBC, which claims to agonise over neutrality in matters environmental, has come unstuck again. In the comments at Biased BBC comes an amusing story from reader Fred Stubber, who explained in a letter to the editor that an interviewee on the corporation's Look North Leeds show, was not quite what he seemed:
Your package on the closure of part of Ferrybridge Power Station was severely biased because of the follow-up interview, which was with John Grant, who was described as ‘an expert in renewable energy and climate change’. Why didn’t you describe him as a hard line environmentalist, which is what he is? Then the viewers would have known where he was coming from and could have adjusted their credibility accordingly. And why did you chose this man anyway, with his known bias on the subject? Why didn’t you interview someone who was a true expert in the whole field of energy production; someone who would take a more balanced and broader view? John Green [sic] gave totally one-sided answers which were narrowly focused on the conventional environmentalist mantra. He is absolutely committed to the environmentalist cause, unsurprisingly because he makes a good living from it.
In fact it's worse than we thought. Grant turns out to be a Green party politician. He is also an academic of sorts, who is working on his PhD at Sheffield Hallam University alongside his teaching duties. According to the university's register of experts, Grant knows about:
- Energy consumption of buildings
- Resilience and adaption of buildings to climate change
- Building integrated renewable energy systems
- Energy efficiency technologies and strategies
- Environmental impact assessment
- Sustainable development
If you go back a couple of years, however, he was described as a "Senior Lecturer in Real Estate" in the Faculty of Development and Society. Elsewhere, he describes himself as an expert in sustainable construction. I'm struggling to find any papers he has published at all.
So I wonder how it was that he came to be chosen as the person to give words of wisdom about the closure of a coal-fired power station.