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BBC’s Climate Change Cover Ignores Charter Obligations Why Won’t BBC Insist on Balance And Fairness in Documentaries? Parliament Must Insist That Standards Are Restored The BBC should be an honest forum for debate. Unhappily, it has become a tendentious, opinionated virtual “Guardian” of the airwaves, with only time for a right-on view of the world. The BBC’s Climate Change programmes are a testament to the fact that this state controlled media monopoly has junked its charter responsibilities, which should guarantee balance and fairness, in favour of political correctness and lefty, mindless, feel good posturing. David Attenborough’s contribution last week in his programme “Are We Changing Planet Earth?” was particularly egregious. I suppose a series which has the sub-title “Climate Chaos”, tells you that the participants probably have already made up their minds that human action is changing our weather, and Attenborough’s anecdotal, sentimental, unprofessional, and ignorant attempt to bamboozle his audience was a travesty of the charter requirements of fairness and balance. He started off with the clear intention of tugging at our heartstrings, with pictures of the cutest polar bears at play in the Arctic. But his nonsensical stand became obvious when he talked about how, if the ice is melting at a rapid pace (real climate scientists know that this is not happening), the polar bear population will decline because they will be unable to feed on their traditional food, the seal. The fact that seals can be cute too, and will appreciate not being munched on by polar bears, was quickly passed over. There were no tired old chestnuts and clichés that the octogenarian animal lover was too ashamed to use. Attenborough made full use of file film to frighten us about hurricanes. We had pictures of huge waves battering coastlines and searing winds knocking houses down. Climate scientists know that no links have been established between supposed global warming and increased hurricane activity, but it is a nice cheap and easy point to make, if you are intent on frightening and battering people into submission, rather than presenting reasoned arguments and intellectual evidence to make your case. The Katrina hurricane wasn’t especially strong, it just hit a low lying area where defences had been shamefully neglected over the years by an incompetent local government. And 2005 wasn’t the worst ever season for hurricanes ever recorded in the U.S. Hurricane action varies over a cycle of about 20 years. Attenborough gave us retreating glaciers in Patagonia, on the move since 1870, way before the great industrialisation of the late 20th century. Then the other tired old factoid about the death toll from the heat wave of 2003 in France, when in fact more old people die in the winter because of the cold. The crowning glory was the Hadlee Centre graphic, which was projected on to a huge floor area, and purported to clinch the case. In fact the graphic glossed over the fact that between 1940 and 1975, world temperatures dived while industrial activity and CO2 output soared, leading sucker scientists to wail about the fact that we all going to die because of climate cooling. Attenborough concluded his programmed with this. “So there you have it. There seems little doubt that this is due to human beings.” On the contrary, he hadn’t come close to proving his “case”. After an hour-long travesty of a “documentary”, there were no opposing views at all. At the very least he should have allowed a proper climate scientist to argue against the Hadlee Centre’s data, which is disputed as tendentious and just plain wrong by those that have knowledge in this field. A responsible programme would have had a least 50 per cent of the air time taken up by opposing views, so that the audience could listen to the arguments and make up its own mid. But the BBC never does this now. It is in violation of its charter duties. It must be made to conform to these responsibilities by our parliamentarians. But don’t hold your breath. Neil Winton – May 28, 2006 |
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