writes Jason Deans in yesterday’s MediaGrauniad, reporting on an article by Jeremy Paxman in the BBC’s internal magazine Ariel (known satirically inside and outside the Corporation as Pravda!). Some excerpts:
Jeremy Paxman has accused the BBC of hypocrisy over climate change, saying it takes a “high moral tone” in its reporting of the issue while at the same time pursuing environmentally irresponsible policies…
“I have neither the learning nor the experience to know whether the doomsayers are right about the human causes of climate change. But I am willing to acknowledge that people who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that it is the consequence of our own behaviour,” Paxman said, writing in this week’s edition of in-house BBC magazine Ariel.
“I assume that this is why the BBC’s coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago. But it strikes me as very odd indeed that an organisation which affects such a high moral tone cannot be more environmentally responsible,” he added.
Emphasis added above, and:
He added that when he asked Yogesh Chauhan, the BBC’s chief advisor, corporate responsibility, why the corporation did not practice what it preaches in its climate change coverage, the reply was: “The biggest impact we can make is through our programmes”.
“The problem is that no one has yet worked out how to generate electricity by hand
wringing,” Paxman added.
Do read the whole thing. It looks like Jeremy is very much sold on the idea of man made global warming, and, more significantly, that he recognises and acknowledges the BBC’s lack of impartiality in pursuing and promoting that agenda.
It’d be really great if Jeremy and the rest of the BBC would recognise that, to paraphrase Jeremy, there are also “people who know a lot more than [the BBC] do [who] may be right when they claim that it is [not, or substantially not, a] consequence of our own behaviour”.
The greatest service the BBC can do for mankind in this debate to actually ensure that there is a full and proper debate and a full and ongoing exploration of all the issues from all rational viewpoints, rather than their current, virtually unchallenged, wholesale promotion of the views of a) those involved in the climate change industry; and, b) those with a political axe to grind (e.g. sundry anti-capitalist greens, wishy-washy lefties etc.).
As for piddling away the licence fee on ‘offsetting’, in itself a controversial ‘solution’ to the alleged problem, if the BBC feels it needs to address the problem, it’d be better just to minimise their carbon footprint, rather than waste tellytaxpayers money as a way of salving their troubled consciences.
Update: More on Paxo in The Times. (Is that how you spell ‘moron’? 🙂
P.S. For his honesty Jeremy has gained a coveted spot on our sidebar!
Hat tip for the links to commenters dmatr & will.
