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.