Bishop Hill Mail on Sunday on the Beeb
David Rose at the Mail on Sunday has a long article about the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme, the seminars set up by Roger Harrabin and Joe Smith to inform BBC editorial policy. I get a mention
[Joe Smith's] opinion, which he sets out on his website, is that ‘everyday human activity – moving, eating, keeping warm or cool – is gently stoking a slow-boil apocalypse’. He calls climate change ‘one of the challenges of the age’ and urges the world to take radical action. A Freedom of Information Act disclosure obtained by Andrew Montford, who writes the climate-change blog Bishop Hill, reveals that the Tyndall Centre provided £5,000 a year for three years from 2002.
The BBC has given Rose a response to the article as follows:
‘The BBC is aware of the funding arrangements for the Real World seminars. They have been considered against our editorial guidelines and raised no issues about impartiality for the BBC or its output.
When you think about it, this is pretty amazing.
BBC editorial policy can be decided by a bunch of environmentalists sitting round a table with senior BBC decision-makers and this raises no issues about impartiality?
UEA can fund the private activity of a BBC journalist and this raises no issues about impartiality either?
Extraordinary.
Reader Comments (68)
The BBC on the other hand extorts money from the viewer and then spins a highly biased version of the facts — almost every time it switches a microphone on, as far as I can tell.
I'll tell you why it's my business. We learn form the GWPF's 2010 accounts that they enjoy the support of at most 82 members, yet the GWPF punches far above it's weight in getting airtime on the BBC and influence in politics, whilst it's science is at best suspect . The GWPF demand a clarity amongst researchers that they are not willing to submit themselves to.
I don't need to join the GWPF to point it's hipocrisy.
Learn to spell and you might be taken seriously. Although if you continue to get your "facts" from Carbon Brief, I don't think so.
@Phillip Bratby which facts from Carbon Brief do you take issue with?
Please point me to a single organisation that accepts donations from private individuals and publicises the names of all the donors.
You seem to think that £500k is a lot of money. It isn't. Once you start employing a couple of people it rapidly disappears. As I pointed out earlier it wouldn't even pay the BBC's electricity bill. Neither would it cover the £760,086.30 paid to the Guardian by the BBC for advertising jobs.
Hengist
As one of the 82 members (subs due !) I don't see the problem in supporters making donations as and when they feel 'flush' rather than committing to a 'membership'.
It would be far more revealing for Greenpeace and WWF to list where their money comes from but just in case anyone should need a pointer or two...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/29/the-log-in-the-eye-of-greenpeace/
I think the numbers quoted there far outweigh the small change GWPF get by on.
Why are you so worried by such a small group of underfunded realists ?
Like any group of believers the BBC has simply redefined things in their favor.
They are corrupt to the core, but rig the rules so they can pretend otherwise.
Think of it as post normal ethics in action, to support post normal science.
It is pleasure to read David Rose's article. In contrast to many others of today, he avoids speculation and opinion and just presents facts. Facts arranged in a skillful and self evident composition allowing the reader to see through these.
Hengist.
Respect where it is due. Your one star review of Donna Laframboise's Delinquent Teenager, the first Amazon UK review you have penned, has already eclipsed the standard for one stardom authors of climate sceptical books, and I mean that as a compliment. I even believe you read it, and put much effort composing it. You deserve more than the miserable 4 out of 27 votes currently logged.
But you forget one thing about BBC airtime, Lord Lawson was a longstanding and respected Chancellor of the Exchequer and that high office entitles him on that basis alone to BBC airtime, even though it might be distasteful to you, regardless of his Foundation, or his daughter's delectable confections
Hengist
why are you and Bob Ward so fixated on the GWPF. What do you care? You seem obsessed with them?
the slightest excuse and you're off on them...
suspicious
Thanks for the kind words Pharos. Indeed Nigel Lawson was I think the longest serving UK Chancellor (up to then) and that makes him a worthy commentator - on fiscal issues but not on climate.
Hengist,
do your homework,
Nigel lawson was energy editor of the FT, as well as Secretary for state for Energy.
Does that make him less qualified than say, a guardian environment journalist, or Roger Harrabin?
Do you think a reporter previously reporting politics is suddenly qualified to pontificate about the science as soon as they are assigned to the Environment beat.
Is Monbiot qualified, Bob Ward?
Lawson has a fine mind - double first I think.
who is qualified to talk about climate?
Not many 'climate change' scientists have qualifications in 'climate change'
As somebody (a non-skeptic) said at the RISJ poles apart event, climate change is not a science issue as much as a problem about the political economy of energy (generation distribution and consumption) . That makes Lawson extremely well qualified.
The article on the Daily Mail website appears to have been taken down - anyone know why or where a backup version might be available?
Odd that the Mail would apparently remove the article...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2063737
but
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2063736
and
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2063738
still exist - so it appears that the Rose article has been removed - at least temporarily
..perhaps Roger Harrabin and Joe Smith have activated their denial of service robot (Bob Ward).
The Mail article is still up at
http://www.thegwpf.org/uk-news/4379-bbcs-mr-climate-change-accepted-p15000-in-grants-from-university-rocked-by-climategate.html
@geoffchambers
No, the link to the Mail article doesn't work at GWPF either.
There is a saved copy of the story here: http://antigreen.blogspot.com/