At the beginning of January, I reported that Peter Thomson, who is a senior environment editor for the BBC, is secretary of the campaigning greenie organisation the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ). Since then, I’ve been carefully tracking his work to see what impact his views have on his reporting.
How did he tackle the news that the IPCC had admitted that it had got it wrong about the Himalayan glaciers? Would it be to go to get a reaction from a leading ‘sceptic’ such as Anthony Watts, who has monitored such problems? Well no. He brought on to The World (the programme of which he is environment editor) the Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilpirin, a political reporter and Democrat supporter turned climate change fanatic who – from the list of her postings – clearly beats even the great Moonbat in her alarmist fervour. And was her reporting at all critical of the IPCC? Er,no. If you listen, you’ll find the fragrant right-on Ms Eilpirin thinks it was just one itsy bitsy mistake and the rest of what the IPCC does is perfect.
I listened next to how Mr Thomson reported the election of Republican Scott Brown to replace Teddy Kennedy in the US Senate. In this report, he speaks first to an energy industry spokesman who is pleased that this could mean the end of cap and trade CO2 emissions bill. That’s a cue for our Peter to spend the rest of the report exploring what must be done instead to stop what he unquestionably accepts is CO2 “pollution”. There’s not a flicker of a doubt that this is vital. And finally, on to Obama’s state of the union address. You may remember, the audience guffawed loudly when the great one mentioned the evidence about ‘climate change’. But for Mr Thomson, that’s not remotely the issue. He’s very excited that his hero the Democrat President is planning to do something about green jobs (and hence’climate change’), despite the ignominious drubbing in the poll.
When I originally reported on the issue of Mr Thomson’s bias, I looked mainly at what his organisation the SEJ was doing. That was alarming enough. There’s now clear and abundant evidence that the brainwashing techniques the SEJ advocates are fully in play in his reporting.