BBC says Harrabin emails stay secret

The BBC have now responded to my request to see the email exchange which Roger Harrabin claims took place between himself and the World Meteorological Organisation at the time of the Jo Abbess "change the report or else" story.

It will probably come as no surprise to anyone that the Beeb is refusing to release the emails.

At the end of the day then, we have the word of one man, Roger Harrabin that the email exchange took place and what its contents were.

If he were a blogger, we would not accept this lack of any evidence. If you don't present evidence, the blogosphere isn't going to take your word for it.

This same principle applies to the BBC too. But more so. 

Time's up!

Twenty working days have now elapsed since I put in my FoI request asking for the email correspondence between the BBC's Roger Harrabin and the WMO. Twenty days is the maximum time period that they say the request should take to process. It goes without saying that I've had no word from the BBC since their acknowledgement of the receipt of the request.

Time to start digging again.... 

BBC keeps the green flag flying

The BBC has announced that it is going to start a season of environmentally themed programmes for children on the CBeebies channel. This follows hot on the heels of their hasty retreat over a BBC Global Warming Day called Planet Relief. When this show was cancelled one of the BBC bigwigs said:

It is not the BBC's job to lead opinion or proselytise on this or any other subject

It would appear that he has since been overruled.

Let's just remember that CBeebies is aimed at the under sixes. Preschoolers. Babes in arms.

I'm trying to imagine the sort of sick mind that thinks that broadcasting wall-to-wall propaganda to pre-schoolers is acceptable in a liberal society. (We are a liberal society still...aren't we?) And I just can't fathom it. Are there really people with such corrupt minds commissioning programmes at the BBC?

It would seem so: Ms Alison Stewart, executive producer. Mr Michael Carrington, head of CBeebies.

Sick, sick people.  

Dig for victory

Deltoid has picked up on my article about Roger Harrabin's response to the Jo Abbess affair. He says I'm accusing Harrabin of lying. What I said was I'm not convinced by his arguments, which is not the same thing. At the moment, I'm reserving judgement. As Mr Deltoid says, it is possible that Roger H received an email from the WMO in the half hour during which he made such an astonishing volte-face, but IMHO it's a tad unlikely.

I tried to ask Roger to publish the WMO correspondence via a comment on the Editors Blog thread, but it doesn't seem to be accepting any input at the moment. So to shortcut the process I've sent in a Freedom of Information request to the BBC to get all the correspondence between them and the WMO on this article.

Let's see what happens. 

Harrabin speaks!

Roger Harrabin has finally responded to the Jo Abbess furore. Writing on the BBC News Editors Blog he claims, incredibly, that the changes were not made in response to Jo Abbess at all.

[After publishing the article I] received suggestions that the article should offer more background. The WMO wanted to emphasise M. Jarraud’s view that a slight temperature decrease in 2008 compared with 2007 should not be misinterpreted as evidence of a general cooling. Some of the feedback seemed helpful so we altered and expanded the report - improving it substantially for the general reader, in my view.

Among my e-mail exchanges was one with an environmental campaigner who published our e-mails implying that we had changed our article as a result of her threat to publicly criticise our report. We didn’t change it for that reason. We changed it to improve the piece. But we’ve stirred the wrath of some of our readers as a result.

So we are asked to believe that between 10:57 am, when Roger was still arguing that the article should be left in its orginal form, and 11:28 am when he wrote to ask whether his changes were acceptable, he had suddenly changed his mind on the basis of new correspondence he had received from, among others, the WMO.

Colour me unconvinced.

I've left a comment on the BBC thread to ask if they will publish the WMO correspondence. At the moment, it doesn't seem to be accepting comments though. 

Colour me unsurprised.

Roger also responds to the argument that he should have made the changes to the story clear within the revised text. (You will remember that he failed even to change the timestamp, which would appear to be contrary to BBC policy). He claims, again apparently with a straight face, that the changes were minor and not worthy of note. By way of verifying this claim, let's just remind ourselves of the change which I highlighted in my earlier post:

Old version

This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory. But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend - and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years.

New version 

But this year's temperatures would still be way above the average - and we would soon exceed the record year of 1998 because of global warming  induced by greenhouse gases.

Roger, please stop digging.

An opportunity for Roger Harrabin

Leading hurricane expert Kerry Emmanuel has published a new paper in which he reports that his models suggest that global warming will cause a reduction in the number of hurricanes (with a slight rise in hurricane intensity in some regions).

Steve McIntyre notes that the results have been strangely ignored by the mainstream media, and wonders if this is because Emmanuel's university - MIT- has failed to publish a press release. This is odd, because as Steve M notes, they weren't so reticent for an earlier Emmanuel paper which predicted an increase in hurricanes.

This should be a great opportunity for the BBC's Roger Harrabin to redeem his reputation by telling the world about the Emmanuel paper. Come on Roger, show us that you're not actually a mouthpiece for the green movement...... 

Remember this?

I'd forgotten this post which I wrote about Roger Harrabin last year. For those who missed it, here again is a leaked email by Mr H in which he outlines his tactics on reporting climate change.

In any future reporting of Gore we should be careful not to suggest that the High Court says Gore was wrong on climate.......

We might say something like: "Al Gore whose film was judged by the High Court to have used some debatable science" or "Al Gore whose film was judged in the High Court to be controversial in parts".

The key is to avoid suggesting that the judge disagreed with the main climate change thesis.

Ah yes, impartiality is all at the BBC. 

Jo Abbess's fifteen minutes of fame

The Harrabin/Abbess story continues to reverberate. It's now crossed the Atlantic and has been picked up by Instapundit and a TV programme called the Glen Beck show, as well as a host of online commentators.

There's an interesting point at towards the end, where Beck reveals that the BBC is refusing to comment on the story, which I suppose is entirely understandable, if not forgiveable.

Benny Peiser's CCNet email newsletter is still digging away at the story too (and even includes my story about the BBC stealth editing guidelines as its headline - thanks for the mention!).  

Meanwhile Peter Risdon has a whole new BBC climate story, with environment correspondent Richard Black lining up scientists to criticise Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark's cosmic ray theory of climate change, but failing to include Svensmark's reponse (if he asked for one at all). And intriguingly, Black has demanded that all of his correspondence with Risdon be kept confidential. What can he possibly have said?

BBC stealth edit policy

Nature's general science blog, The Great Beyond, rounds up the Harrabin/Abbess story for its readers and adds a little titbit that shows the BBC in a pretty poor light. Author Daniel Cressey points to a BBC editor's blog post which outlines the corporation's approach to stealth edits:

When we make a major change or revision to a story we republish it with a new timestamp, indicating it’s a new version of the story. If there’s been a change to a key point in the story we will often point this out in the later version (saying something like "earlier reports had said...").

But lesser changes - including minor factual errors, corrected spellings and reworded paragraphs - go through with no new timestamp because in substance the story has not actually progressed any further. This has led to accusations we are "stealth editing" - a sinister-sounding term that implies we are actively trying to hide what we are doing. We’re not. It’s just that continually updating the timestamp risks making it meaningless, and pages of notes about when and where minor revisions are made do not make for a riveting read.

Cressey helpfully shows us some of the revisions made so we can judge for ourselves how well Roger Harrabin is adhering to this policy. Here's one of them:

Old version

This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory. But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend - and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years.

New version 

But this year's temperatures would still be way above the average - and we would soon exceed the record year of 1998 because of global warming  induced by greenhouse gases.

Now I don't know about you, but to me, this doesn't look to me like "minor factual errors, corrected spellings and reworded paragraphs". It's a complete change to the meaning. So as well as caving in to minor threats from a slightly loopy environmentalist, Roger Harrabin appears to be in breach of BBC policy on revising his articles.

Harrabin gotcha!

My favourite BBC environment correspondent, Roger Harrabin, seems to have been caught napping. A green activist called Jo Abbess wrote an email to Harrabin asking him to change an article he wrote to make it more acceptable to green opinion. Harrabin promptly wrote back to see if his changes were acceptable to her! Abbess doesn't seem to be the sharpest tool in the box, because she promptly posted the correspondence up on a website. The full correspondence is here.

Click to read more ...

One side of the story

The BBC is trumpeting a UN report on the loss of ice from glaciers.

The rate at which some of the world's glaciers are melting has more than doubled, new data says.

Which begs the question of what has happened to the others. Has the rate more than halved? Or are they in fact growing. Helpfully, Biased BBC points out that Arctic Sea ice is back to normal and the world has endured its coldest winter for decades, so it's probably fair to say that global catastrophe is not yet upon us.

Ah, but the UN are talking about glaciers, not icecaps, I hear you say. Well, take a look at this report from the Washington Post back in 1922 (H/T Anthony Watts).

 

Here's the text in more legible form:

The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway.

Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.

Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.

 Perspective is a wonderful thing.

Planet Relief redux

Remember the BBC's Planet Relief? 24 hours of being lectured by holier-than-thou greens? It was pulled from the schedules a year into the project, when BBC planners got cold feet. They reckoned their viewers might not be too pleased at having naked propaganda shoved down their throats.

I came across some interesting developments related to this project the other day. It's a bit involved, but stick with me.

Planet Relief was the brainchild of an environmentalist called Matt Prescott. Now it's interesting in itself that an environmental campaigner appears to have been appointed to head a very large BBC project. Still more surprising is the fact that he was barely out of University when appointed to head it up.

The justification for the licence fee has always been that the BBC is objective and impartial, and yet here we have Mr Prescott brought in from outside, apparently to use public resources to promote his own (and presumably the BBC's) political views.

Now perhaps I'm leaping to conclusions. Perhaps Mr Prescott has TV experience, as well as being an environmental campaigner. Perhaps his objectivity and is unimpeachable. Let's see.

So what do we know about Matt Prescott?

His Blogger profile can be seen here. He is nothing if not prolific, with fully eleven blogs associated with him. He has a PhD in zoology from Oxford, and organised the Oxford Earth Summit. In 2005 he launched a campaign to ban incandescent bulbs and since graduating has worked for:

• Prof. Norman Myers (a British environmentalist),
• Sir Crispin Tickell,(a British diplomat, environmentalist and academic)
• Roger Harrabin,(BBC environment)
  
• George Monbiot, (journalist and environmentalist)
  
• Jon Plowman (Head of BBC comedy)
  
• Glenwyn Benson (Controller BBC knowledge)

Now an environmentalist working for environmentalists isn't really news, but working for the head of BBC comedy? That's a bit odd isn't it?

According to this article by Prescott himself, he was introduced to Plowman by Roger Harrabin and the Open University's Joe Smith in Cambridge "a couple of years ago". This puts it in 2006.

Now Cambridge, Roger Harrabin, and Joe Smith rang a bell with me. Harrabin and Smith run something called the Cambridge Environment and Media Forum (CEMP) which I've blogged about previously. It's funded by the BBC and is alleged to look at ways of improving reporting of environmental stories. There are some details of some of the seminars they have organised online. By looking at the lists of attendees it appears that the meeting of Prescott and Plowman may have taken place at the seminar at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge on September 14th and 15th 2006, the purpose of which was apparently to look at how non-factual program makers might include environmental and development issues in their storylines. It's worth a look at the names of those involved which reads like a list of the movers and shakers in the upper echelons of the Beeb.

We should first stand back and wonder how a fresh-faced PhD, not long out of Oxford, manages to move so rapidly through the ranks at the BBC. No sooner is he in the door than he is hob-nobbing some of the most powerful people in the BBC. But not only that, but he has also landed himself a major project to co-ordinate. It's pretty impressive stuff.

We might also wonder how  Mr Prescott came to work at the BBC. Was he an employee or a consultant? If the former, was the position advertised openly, and if the latter, what particular expertise was Prescott supposed to bring in order to justify his retention.

Why, we wonder, did the allegedly objective BBC journalist Roger Harrabin invite this rather wet-behind-the-ears environmentalist to meet such important people?

Reasons for the invitation aside, the result seems to have been that Plowman, the head of BBC comedy, got right behind the Planet Relief idea. He was still supportive after it was cancelled. In Prescott's words:

Jon did his best for Planet Relief within the BBC and stuck by me after his baby was cancelled.

Prescott is also clear that Harrabin and his CEMP colleague Joe Smith (who, we note in passing, is also a non-political public servant and who also has a startling sparse publication record, according to his webpage) were also instrumental in getting the Planet Relief project off the ground:

Joe Smith (Open University) and Roger Harrabin (BBC News) [...] also played a crucial role in helping to get things off the ground a couple of years ago.

After Planet Relief was pulled, Prescott went back to campaigning - as noted above, he had launched a campaign to ban incandescent bulbs in 2005. The BBC obligingly gave him a slot on their website to promote his views, here and another one here.

Roll forward to today, and Matt's latest wheeze is E-day. This time, we are all going to switch off lights for a day and the planet will be saved. All the usual suspects are involved: Jon Plowman is on the steering committee, and among the list of people thanked for help and support are Roger Harrabin and the following BBC staff:

• Andrew Lane (BBC Weather)
• Andrew Zincke (BBC Worldwide)
• David Shukman (BBC)
• Jonathan Harvey (BBC)
• Kate Forbes (BBC)
• Mark Damazer (BBC Radio 4)
• Mark Kinver (BBC)
• Peter Barron (BBC)
• Richard Black (BBC)
• Sarah Mukherjee (BBC)
• Sophie Stafford (BBC Wildlife Magazine)
• Will Watt (BBC Worldwide)
  

In addition, occasional BBC correspondent Alex Kirby seems to be heavily involved. 

Now, were we especially naive, we might think that all these BBC staff were giving their spare time to support Mr Prescott's campaign. But thirteen people, representing all the major arms of the BBC, is strongly suggestive that the  Corporation is giving unofficial support to this campaign which is nothing if not political. Essentially, they've tried to resurrect Planet Relief on the quiet. They've done their bit puffing up E-day, with an online article from Richard Black at the start of the month and another today. They seem to be almost the only MSM outlet which seems to think E-day is news.

So where is all this heading? I don't really know, but it just doesn't look right to me. It kind of looks as if the BBC is allowing itself to be used once again as a vehicle for environmentalist propaganda.

Just another reason to privatise it. 

 Update:

Matt Sinclair is following E-day's progress. So far energy consumption is above normal. Even the kindest heart would find it hard not to snigger. 

Different worldviews

Via Instapundit comes the this Reuters story that Danish "youths" have been rioting for the seventh night in a row.

Bands of youths set fire to cars, buses and schools in Denmark on Saturday, the seventh night of rioting and vandalism in the capital Copenhagen and other Danish cities, police said on Sunday.

Four youths were arrested in the capital for suspected arson and at least 24 fires were reported across the country. Several youths were detained in Denmark's second city Aarhus in Jutland, and in Odense on Funen island.

I wonder what these "youths" were rioting about? There's a clue later in the article...

Authorities have arrested dozens of youths, predominantly with immigrant backgrounds.

And if you read nearly to the end of the article. 

Social workers said an alleged plot to kill a Danish cartoonist for his drawing two years ago of the Prophet Mohammad might have fuelled the riots. Danish newspapers reprinted the cartoon on Wednesday in protest against the plot.

Yes, I suppose it "might have" done.

Good to see that after seven nights of rioting, Reuters felt the story was newsworthy. What about the Beeb, though? Their take on the story is here:

Hundreds of Danish Muslims have been demonstrating in Copenhagen against the reprinting of a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad they consider offensive.

"Demonstrating" eh?  I wonder if someone objecting to the licence fee burnt TV centre to the ground, the BBC would call it a "demonstration"? Perhaps not.

Does anyone find it slightly disturbing that these appear to be the only two UK-based references to this story on Google news? 

Market share

There is much glee at the BBC over the Competition Commission's plans for supermarkets. Apparently the big four have too much market power and they're going to have to sell land to their competitors. Who won't be able to get planning permission anyway.

But hey ho, a few more bureaucrats will be kept in gainful (if not useful) employment.

The Beeb has a graph up on their website showing the sheer dominance of the big four supermarkets:

 

It's instructive to compare Tesco's paltry 31% of the grocery market with the BBC's 54% of the radio market.  If the BBC was privately owned, the competition authorities would have had it broken up long ago.

Why do we have to tolerate it just because it raises its financing coercively? 

Because of the unique way it is funded....

...the BBC will mot bother to check its facts.

Auntie Beeb has excelled herself today, with a rather unsubtle attempt to libel the entire home education community as child molestors. They've done a stealth edit to cover their tracks, but via the Google cache, here is the original piece.

 

 The key section is this:

Judith Gillespie, of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, was worried that there was not register of youngsters withdrawn from school.

She cited a case involving five-year-old Danielle Reid, who was murdered by her mother's partner in Inverness in 2002.

A report into the case found the authorities had lost track of the youngster when her mother withdrew her from school.

As far as this goes these statements are true, but there is no connection with home education whatsoever. According to the independent report into Danielle's death, her mother claimed that the family were moving to Manchester. This is why Danielle was taken out of school. Quite how Judith Gillespie can attempt to make make a link with HE is beyond me. It looks like a rather transparent attempt to smear a lot of innocent people.