Peter Horrocks and the truth

Some weeks ago I mentioned a posting on the BBC editors blog by Peter Horrocks, the head of BBC news in which he claimed that the BBC did not have a line on "climate change".

BBC News certainly does not have a line on climate change, however the weight of our coverage reflects the fact that there is an increasingly strong (although not overwhelming) weight of scientific opinion in favour of the proposition that climate change is happening and is being largely caused by man.

He also said this:

It is not the BBC's job to lead opinion or proselytise on this or any other subject. However we can make informed judgements and that is what we will continue to do.

This was all said in the context of a proposed "Planet Relief" special - a weekend in which the whole network would be devoted to programmes on global warming. Eventually Planet Relief was pulled from the schedules, as even the BBC thought it would be unable to brush off questions about its partiality.

Now, however, it seems that the corporation are trying to do exactly what Horrocks said they wouldn't do. According to Rifait Jawaid, again on the BBC editors blog, there is to be a new special about the impact of climate change in Bangladesh.

I think James Sales, who I know from my World Service days, has done a great job by single-handedly taking this project to fruition. I'm told that it was James who first mooted the idea of this [...] show to create awareness on climate change amongst the poverty stricken Bangladeshis.

 [My emphasis]

So here we have a programme which seeks to lead opinion among its audience, something which directly contradicts the claims of Peter Horrocks from just a few months ago. Could someone be telling fibs, we wonder?

I've left a comment on Jawaid's blog post, pointing out this apparent anomoly. I wonder if it will be published? 

BBC Environment reporters

Incidentally to my research on the previous posting, I came upon the surprising fact that Roger Harrabin is a graduate in English.

I don't know about you, but I find it pretty gobsmacking that someone who is paid to interpret complex scientific papers and reports on our behalf doesn't actually have a flaming clue what any of it means. In fact take that back, he presumably doesn't read any of the papers at all because he is incapable of understanding them. He regurgitates press releases for a living.

He's semi-educated.

It does rather explain the quality of some of his reporting though. 

And what about the rest of the BBC's environment team?

• Margaret Gilmore was an environment correspondent until 2005. She studied English.
  
• Tom Fielden, science and environment correspondent - not sure what subject he studied, but it wasn't scientific. 
• Richard Bilton, previously environment reporter - studied Communication. 
• Matt McGrath and Julian Pettifer - I can find no record of them ever having been to university, although presumably they must have been.

So here's the challenge: can anyone find a BBC environment reporter with a scientific background?

Roger Harrabin

The Nameless One, writing at the Devil's Kitchen, notes with his customary gusto, a leaked BBC email which shows BBC environment reporter Roger Harrabin's attempts to develop a party line on the "Al Gore made it up" court ruling. (Well, it was words to that effect anyway). Harrabin's tactics for saving Gore's face are these:

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.

Attentive readers will remember that, according to Head of BBC TV news Peter Horrocks, that the BBC has no line on climate change. What the leaking of the memo shows is that either Horrocks is a liar or Harrabin is attemping to create an official line in contravention of BBC policy. I wonder which one of them will be disciplined?

As happens, I was looking into Harrabin myself when I read DK's story. According to his BBC website profile he is co-director or something called the Cambridge Environment and Media Programme, which is part-funded by the BBC (the rest of the funding being from private sources - I wonder who?). Apparently this organisation, which doesn't seem to have a website, tries to find ways to engage the media in debates on sustainable development.  

Now is it just me, or does it seem a bit odd that the BBC is using public money to persuade itself to engage in debate on environmental issues? Couldn't it just, you know, engage?

Doesn't it seem stranger still that the loot is being sent to an organisation run by one of its own employees? This seems to reverse the normal employer/employee relationship. Shouldn't the higher-ups at the BBC be telling Harrabin what to do?

And isn't it yet more bizarre that it is trying to promote inclusion of particular issues in the news agenda - an overtly political act if ever there was one? The BBC, remember, has no line on climate change (and presumably the whole question of environmentalism too). Is the BBC actually funding a campaign to promote environmentalism on the airwaves?

I don't know about you, but I smell fish.

Jane Garvey

The BBC is asking listeners to send in their favourite Jane Garvey moment to mark the presenter's departure from her Radio 5 Live show. Mine is probably a bit too rude for them to accept so I'm posting it here. I remember a truly awe-inspiring cock-up which I think was one of JG's. It went something like:

JG: "And now we're just going to get the latest results from the English Cunty Cricket matches.....oh, I'm most dreadfully sorry...er..and ...er moving swiftly on....".

Never show regret. Never apologise.

Irony alive and well at the BBC

On the BBC's climate change portal at the moment, the main stories include

• Calls to strengthen the EU emissions trading scheme for airlines
• Calls to encourage homes to go green
• A report that the British are addicted to cheap flights
• A report that the risk of flooding due to climate change has been underestimated
• A conference to discuss tackling climate change
• Increases in forest fires due to climate change
• A report that APEC has muddied the climate change waters
• A way to track your carbon emissions through your phone
• A report that winter sports threaten mountain ecosystems

and lastly, and surely with tongue firmly in cheek, an entry from the Editors blog in which Head of TV news, Peter Horrocks says that the BBC has no line on climate change.

You couldn't make it up. 

Shameless BBC still peddling porkies for greens

This time it's the story of a City lawyer cum environmentalist called Lewis Gordon Pugh, who has gone for a dip at the North Pole "to highlight the effects of climate change". Mr Pugh's website shows him to be a man with no qualms about blowing his own trumpet. He describes his ability to swim in cold water thusly:

As soon as I enter cold water my body shunts all my warm blood to my core to protect my vital organs. It then generates incredible heat. However, before I even enter the water, I am able to elevate my core body temperature by as much as 1.4°C (35F). This phenomenon, now known as "anticipatory thermogenises", has to our knowledge not been noted in any other human being.

Golly. A superhuman physical specimen then. So, what about the dip in the Arctic then?

The City lawyer said the swim was a triumph but it was "a tragedy that it's possible to swim at the North Pole. I hope my swim will inspire world leaders to take climate change seriously," he said.

What a load of old twaddle. We've been here before haven't we? Remember this from a few years back?

An American scientist says a large expanse of ice-free water has opened up at the North Pole this year. Dr James McCarthy, an oceanographer, says he found a mile-wide (1.6 km) stretch of open ocean on a recent trip to the region.

Unfortunately for Dr McCarthy (an IPCC man, by the way) and for the attention hungry superman, Mr Pugh, it was pointed out by the late great John Daly that expanses of open sea water had been observed at the poles for decades. They even had a name - polynyas - and they could be tens of miles wide.

 

The McCarthy scare story was widely reported, although some reputable outlets like the New York Times withdrew it once it was shown to be arrant nonsense.  The BBC doesn't seem to operate to these kind of standards though and McCarthy's tall tale is still available on their website. And now, of course, they are recycling it again for the benefit of Mr Pugh and the environmental movement, presumably hoping that no-one will notice that it was utterly debunked seven years ago.

Bad week at the Beeb

The BBC is really having a dreadful week. The sexed up trailer about the Queen was a remarkable failing in itself, and Biased BBC's expose of the lies and spin the BBC website's writers went through as they tried to cover their backsides is a damning indictment of the corporation's attachment, or lack of it, to portraying the unvarnished truth.

To add to their woes, Conservative Home has revealed that Anthony Jay of Yes Minister fame is about to issue a pamphlet called Confessions of a Reformed BBC Producer. It doesn't seem to be very complimentary, to say the least. For example..

Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place, you name it, we were anti it.

Meanwhile there is renewed speculation that the BBC has an employee who is a member of Hamas. The Jewish Chronicle also alleges that the same man, one Fayad Abu Shamala, was involved in negociating the release of Alan Johnson. I wonder whether anything what goodies Mr Fayad had to offer.

BBC accidentally misses the facts again

Via Jock Coats, the BBC reports that a "wealthy laird" is going to evict tenants from "the tiny Fife mining village of Coaltown of Wemyss.

Apparently these despicable actions are being compared to the highland clearances - all those miners, working class heroes every man jack of them - being turfed out onto the streets by the heartless laird who is probably going to use their miserable hovels to house his flocks of sheep. Strangely, the only source for the "highland clearances" line appears to be the BBC themselves, but we'll let that pass.

There's nothing like setting the scene properly is there? Wicked laird, poverty stricken working class heroes cast out into the cold. I can almost feel the empathy welling up inside me.

Erm, except that Coaltown of Wemyss hasn't had a mine since 1970. It's now a rather cute conservation area. These facts kind of spoil the story though, don't they? Trust the BBC to miss them.

Update: Melanie Phillips notes the BBC sexing up another story today. It's because of the unique way they're funded. 

Al Gore, climate boffin

DK notes that the BBC has been pushing Al Gore as a climate scientist. This puffing of one of their favourites reminded me of their boosting of Will Hutton, who they described as an economist. This, I observed, was an odd description for someone who had been a stockbroker and journalist.

Is this a coincidence or is there a pattern here? 

Alan Johnson

The news of Alan Johnson's release from captivity is obviously very welcome. However the BBC's blanket coverage, while understandable, was horrible and made my toes curl. The BBC rather revealed their discomfort at their own excesses by the embarrassed mention of the five British hostages in Iraq at the end of the Johnson piece. This was probably the first that most people had heard of them since the day they were seized.

When you think about it, isn't it just wrong that Alan Johnson got a slot on the BBC news and on the front of the website, pretty much every day for the last four months, while the other hostages were all but forgotten? It rather nicely encapsulates the problem with the BBC, or even the public sector as a whole.

It's run for the benefit of its staff, rather than for the public who pay for it. 

Climate trends at the BBC

I was pondering the usage of the term "climate change" and how it seems to have taken over from "global warming" as a shorthand for the crise-du-jour. Is it really taking over, or have I just imagined it.

After searching around for a suitable tool to test the theory, I discovered that Google News now has an archive facility. This will let you do a search on a particular site and for a particular year. (If anyone knows of a better way to do this, do let me know. Google Trends won't do it because that's searches, not mentions on a site).

This is how things are at the BBC:

 

Which pretty much confirms what I'd thought. The growth in the BBC coverage is also startling. AGW has been a news issue for a long time now, so it's hard to come up with a rational explanation of these figures that is not conspiratorial.

Then, on the offchance, I thought I'd compare the growth of the total of the two terms in the BBC to all news organisations. This was quite interesting too:

 

You'll notice that the two lines are plotted on different vertical axes, but what it shows is that the two phrases were relatively more prevalent much sooner at the BBC than they were at other organisations.

So is this evidence of the BBC pushing an agenda? Perhaps. Probably, even. In order to prove it we would have to discount the possibility of a growth in the number of news organisations, or perhaps even the BBC getting having a relatively larger internet presence sooner than its competitors.

Gut feel says that this chart confirms my belief that the BBC has been acting as the publicity arm of the environmental movement.

BBC balance - Humphrys style

But if our elected representatives now regard global warming as the greatest threat to the world, the idea that they should ban nothing is a joke. You'll explain to your little boy in 15 years' time, "No, of course we didn't ban anything because we were liberals, we were libertarians ... and we wanted to enjoy ourselves ... Fuck you!"'

"Oh," ministers - of all parties - say. "Encouragement works best." Does it bollocks! Regulation works best: you order them to reduce the salt content of these foods by 50 per cent by next Thursday week ... The whole thing is scandalous, but we've allowed them to get away with it because, by and large, government is scared of the big supermarket chains and always has been.'

Source: The Graun 

It's interesting to think of these beliefs when you next hear Mr Humphrys interview an oil company executive or someone from a supermarket. I also remember him interviewing Ross Clark on the subject of red tape - a quite astonishingly aggressive interview for a book launch. Clearly his love of regulation momentarily (well, for the duration of the interview actually) got the better of his ingrained BBC balance on that one.

The guy is a deep green nutcase, paid for by you.

(As an aside, I've categorised this post as BBC and Greens. Is that tautological?) 

Your views are unacceptable

There was an interesting article in the Times last week. Media Editor Dan Sabbagh profiled the BBC deputy director general, Mark Byford, who is the man responsible for maintaining the organisation's impartiality.

Try to ask him whether the BBC has a case to answer, and it is hard to get anywhere. Andrew Marr’s remarks, for example, are dismissed as “a quote from a seminar that was held several months ago,” and while Mr Byford is willing to concede that “he’s heard people say” that the BBC has a liberal bias, he does not accept it exists.

I don't suppose he reads Biased BBC then - everything's fine and dandy and the fact that ex-BBC journalists like Andrew Marr and Robin Aitken say that there is bias is just something that can be shrugged off. Move along, nothing to see here.

Sabbagh makes a very pertinent point though which rather skewers Byford as a man who is being economic with the actualité:

Yet the final report repeatedly teases out examples where the BBC has reflected a narrower range of opinion than exists in Britain at large. The document asks, when, for example, was the last time Radio 4’s Today discussed capital punishment in a way that was in any way not hostile to the notion – or why politicians are treated completely differently to the spokesmen for pressure groups.

So could the BBC now air a “polemic” in favour of capital punishment? That would cause a stir. On this Mr Byford is hard to pin down: he argues that the BBC gives vent to a broad range of views “every week on Question Time”; that polemic would not be appropriate in news and current affairs, although “in a documentary there is a place for it”. But he does not agree that he should commission a bring back hanging documentary either.

I think this is pretty much indefensible. Capital punishment is a view favoured by nearly half the population (full disclosure: not the half I'm in)  so what we are seeing is that the deputy director general of the BBC is essentially indicating that the views of half of the licence fee payers are so offensive to him that he is willing to abuse his power and prevent these views being aired in a documentary. His head should surely roll for this, and if the governors (or whatever they call themselves these days) don't do it, then their heads should roll too.

What other views are offensive to Mr Byford? Euroscepticism? Corporal punishment? English Parliament? Conservatism?

Based on the BBC's output, I think we can probably speculate that it's all of the above.

He should go. 

BBC officially biased

The Sunday Times is reporting that an internal BBC report to be published next week will conclude that the corporation is institutionally biased in favour of the left wing causes held dear by most of its staff and journalists. While it is nice to have confirmation of what most of the dextrospere has long known, we have no idea of whether the report will actually have any effect in practive. It's much more likely that it will be paraded as evidence that the Beeb has changed while actually leaving everything just as it is.

If the BBC is sincere about wanting to correct the imbalance we might expect to see a number of actions.

Firstly, heads would have to roll. The requirement to be balanced is a key part of the BBC's charter - such a flagrant breach surely demands a major clear out of the senior staff who have allowed this state of affairs to continue unaddressed for so many years.

The placing of BBC job advertisements in the Guardian, to the virtual exclusion of any other newspapers, should be ended. There should be a defined period - say ten years - in which all BBC jobs are only advertised in the Telegraph. This should help redress the balance in the staffing.

The BBC's disinformation campaigns on behalf of environmentalists and socialists need to be reversed. There needs to be an sustained series of programmes to question global warming, recycling, UK membership of the EU, and all the other myriad causes for which the corporation acts as an unpaid cheerleader. The BBC has told one side of the story for many years. In order to redress the balance it needs to tell the other side, and the other side only, for many more years to come.

Of course there's not a cat's chance of any of this actually happening. There will be a fuss this week when the report comes out. Then when it's all died down again, the red flag will be raised again over Television Centre and normal service will be resumed. 

Bizarre BBC bias

A jaw-dropping piece of BBC leftism: at the end of an article describing the festivities surrounding the reopening of the Festival Hall, readers are asked to comment as follows:

Should City bankers donate a proportion of their fortunes to causes like the Royal Festival Hall? Let us know what you think using the form below.

Just remember folks, it's not a party political bias - the BBC promulgates a wide variety of left wing views.

(Via Biased BBC)