Wednesday 17 February, 2010

World
UK
Science/Nature

By Charles Gardner

I have always wondered why BBC coverage of the Global Warming debate reflects such a one-track monotone chorus which seems never even to attempt to include some other view, or even suggest that there is one.

But now we have the answer as the can of worms over climate change continues to spew out ever more unpalatable truths.

Their blatant bias has to do with conflicting interests in relation to the £8 billion pension fund of their 58,000-plus employees.

And it emerges that there is an official BBC editorial policy that chains reporters to a line that does not allow any debunking view to be countenanced.

For the corporation is under investigation after being inundated with complaints that its coverage of climate change is biased in favour of those who say it is a man-made phenomenon.

And the pension fund is likely to come under close scrutiny over its commitment to promote a low-carbon economy while struggling to reverse an estimated £2 billion deficit.

Concerns are growing that BBC journalists and their bosses regard disputed scientific theory that climate change is caused by mankind as ‘mainstream’ while huge sums of employees’ money is invested in companies whose success depends on the theory being widely accepted.

The fund accounts for about £8 of the £142.50 licence fee and the proportion looks likely to rise as programme budgets may have to be cut to help reduce the deficit.

The BBC is apparently the only media organisation in Britain whose pension fund is a member of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change whose chairman Peter Dunscombe is also the BBC’s head of pensions investment.

Official editorial policy on how its correspondents should cover global warming was revealed after a member of the public wrote in: “I have heard reports that the BBC has decided not to broadcast any news or reports which disprove, disagree, or cast doubt on global warming theory. Could you provide some form of justification for this?”

And in a reply dated October 26 last year, Stephanie Harris, head of accountability at BBC News, said: “BBC News takes the view that our reporting needs to be calibrated to take into account the scientific consensus that global warming is man-made.”

She went on to quote from a BBC-commissioned report published in June 2007 which said: “There may now be a broad scientific consensus that climate change is definitely happening and that it is at least predominantly man-made. The weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to opponents of the consensus.”

Prominent among the recent campaigns of the Institutional Investors Group was the call for a ‘strong and binding’ global agreement on climate change – one that fell on deaf ears when the UN’s Copenhagen summit failed to reach agreement on emissions targets and a cut in greenhouses gases.

Former BBC newsreader Peter Sissons is unhappy with the corporation’s coverage.

He said recently: “The corporation’s most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that ‘the science is settled’ when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn’t. It is, in effect, BBC policy, enthusiastically carried out by the BBC’s environment correspondents, that those views should not be heard. I was not proud to be working for an organisation with a corporate mind so closed on such an important issue.”

And this is not the only issue for which the BBC is in the dock…Their bias on Israel has been well exposed and, throughout yet another emotionally-driven media campaign by pro-euthanasia lobby groups, the views of many disabled people and those who disagree with legalising assisted suicide have been marginalised – most notably by the one-sided BBC coverage of the matter.

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