I wrote yesterday that the BBC Trustee’s report into science coverage is a travesty. It is worse. Professor Steve Jones says that too much space is given to climate “deniers”. Yet at least five years ago the BBC gave up all pretence at balance in climate reporting. It wrote:
The BBC has held a high level seminar with some of the best scientific experts (on whose and what measurement) and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of consensus.
That was justification for a propaganda mountain, which I have chronicled. Richard Black and his cohorts have been following that approach with relish. Their hated “deniers” are routinely ignored – or if they are mentioned – misrepresented and denigrated. So Professor Jones in his “inquiry” could not even spot what was blatantly obvious and instead unleashed another series of hate lies against those who dare to disagree with the BBC worldview.
The man who sanctioned this travesty is BBC trustee Richard Ayre, who has a pivotal role among the trustees because he is on the Editorial Standards Committee – he is one of only two professional journalists on the body and in charge (on our behalf!) of journalistic integrity.
He’s supposed to be independent, but of course isn’t – for a start, he’s a BBC pensioner (reliant on funds derived from a climate change investment portfolio)- and he worked for the corporation for almost 30 years before taking “early retirement” and going to work for Ofcom, that other arm of so-called regulation that perpetuates liberal-left media bias.
I know Mr Ayre reasonably well from contact with him during the 1990s when when he was controller of editorial policy. He believes without question he is fair minded and balanced, but it’s simply not true. He’s totally infected with the BBC mindset and it’s obvious from the moment he opens his mouth.
External evidence is easy to come by to support this, although Richard himself won’t and can’t see it. First he deliberately flaunts that his partner is the homo-eroticist artist Guy Burch, a militant “humanist” and contributor to the Pink Paper. Not part of the right-wing establishment, then. Second he himself is a highly active member of the Article 19 human rights and press freedom group. Such evocative touchy-feely, conscience touching words!In reality, it’s a worldwide militant force camapigning for…wait for it, climate change activism. Look at this from its website:
People living at risk of climate change or environmental degradation need to understand what is happening and take part in deciding how best to cope. ARTICLE 19 is working to ensure that people are informed and governments are held accountable for their environmental policies.
So let’s get this straight. The man who is jointly in charge of a so-called objective journalistic review into the BBC’s scientific coverage endorsed findings from a so-called independent “expert” (used regularly by the BBC for contributions) who could not even see what the corporation had being doing in terms of partisanship for years, and then went on to have the effrontery to call for overt increased censorship. Not only that, this “trustee” himself is a major supporter – it says so on the BBC trustee website -of an organisation that is camapaigning for…climate change activism.
You couldn’t make it up, could you?
NB – I wrongly stated in earlier versions of this report that Richard Ayre is the sole journalist on the ESC. It’s actually chaired by trustee Alison Hastings, who worked for many years in regional newspapers, and is a former editor of the Evening Chronicle in Newscastle. But that doesn’t alter the main point about Richard Ayre. And Ms Hastings it was who vigorously defended in April a Panorama documentary about the Israeli boarding of the Mavi Marmara as “accurate and impartial” overall. She may once have been a good editor…but BBC arrogance addles even the best of brains.
Isn’t this as close to being a ‘smoking gun’ as you can get? Surely there must be somebody, or indeed some body, who this can can be complained to about this? Or are the BBC really beyond scrutiny and control?
Ermm. Chris Patten?
Good luck with that!
One always welcomes the input of BBC impartiality advocates when they choose to appear.
Especially scientifically qualified ones.
Maybe now is a good moment to offer an insight?
What’s the mot du jour? Oh yes… *sigh*
Sadly no cherry vultures tempted off perches today.
Maybe if someone posted a premature ‘I see nowhere on the BBC is it mentioned..’ or a 70’s gameshow?
‘Shut that door’ has become sinister as a metaphor, mind.
DavidACGregory David Gregory Daily Mail. #hackgate all the BBC’s fault again.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article… Starting to think they’re worried about something.
Just wondering, who ‘they’ might be in this context?
Methinks Mr Gregory should be doing his job not worrying about what a commercial paper is writing about his employer!
DG knows that the inquiry is going to hit other parts of the Tory Press™, and believes he smells the Mail’s fear. The BBC’s power over the public consciousness will be even greater in the end.
Well, it’s better than nothing…
DavidACGregory David Gregory If you missed it the full report on BBC Science is well worth a read.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/asset…
Just try commenting on air in future 🙂
Here’s another one from the website:
“ARTICLE 19 however, sees that commercial issues such as ownership, taxes, and advertising revenue can all seriously undermine media independence and diversity.”
Media diversity! Now where have we heard that before?
Well if you had to make 4 lists.
1. Items of BBC left wing bias.
2. Items of BBC right wing criticism.
3. Items of right wing bias.
4. Items of left wing criticism
Lists 1 & 2 would be full and lists 3 & 4 would be empty.
Says it all does it not.
Does anyone know what percentage the BBC controls of the UK media versus New International.
It appears that the BBC does not come into this question and it should.
If it is too high and I suspect that it is. That should be reduced as well.
http://fullfact.org/factchecks/bbc_sky_news_corp_audience_share-2831
Seems to be trying to be balanced.
Which is why one suspects it is a source of facts the BBC may not support.
I have read that it is 73%.
Mr Jones also has some serious questions about his credibility following some truly dumb arse public statements like =
“Natural selection has to some extent been repealed”
Does he agree with the consensus of academics that extensively criticised him over this pronouncement ?
‘Jones suggested in a BBC Radio Ulster interview in 2006 that Creationists should be disallowed from being medical doctors’
Does he still assert that people should be excluded from areas of public life and service because he does not agree with their religious beliefs? bit 1933 me thinks!
In 2009 Jones described private schools as a “cancer on the education system”
Does he believe therefore that children in private schools are a negative effect on society as they are a symptom of that “cancer”?
does he also believe that their parents desire to have a private eduction for their children feeds that cancer? and should be eradicated ?
Also why can I not find his education anywhere ? seems he was born 24 March 1944 and then suddenly is a BSc, PhD and DSc at the University of Edinburgh???
If he needs any help he could ask his BBC connected documentary maker wife who Amazingly worked for a for a Labour MP John Mackintosh [also University of Edinburgh] and I wonder how many of the lectures in his name they have been to with such talkers as Jack McConnell, MSP, First Minister of Scotland; John Kenneth Galbraith; Niel Kinnock MP; John Smith MP; Donald Dewar MSP, First Minister of Scotland; and Gordon Brown MP ?.
Today’s Dilbert refers…
http://www.dilbert.com/
This should be on the front page of every MSM outlet, this is the kind of news that needs to be aired.
This is the kind of corruption that goes unreported in the MSM and that is why these moral degenerates are able to do as they please. These utter scum can do as they please with no fear of being brought to account. The MSM is full to bursting with claptrap and barely readable garbage while the things we really need to know about go on unheeded. Well done for lifting the lid on these vermin.
Problem isn’t only in the MSN Bishop Hill put up a question about the interconnections of this reports author and the forces governing what we are allowed to hear /think and the first posts up are so called sceptics saying how unfair its in to Jones and asking that the thread be cut ?? 10 years of pushing and poking the BBC to get fair hearing and this one man has shoved the whole debate back to day one with this get out of jail free card and ‘sceptic’ are worried we are being unfair to him and his clan!! jeezzzzz!
If they could balance their reporting now and again, with the enormous strides being made in nuclear fusion (say), things wouldn’t be so depressing.
http://www.bnet.com/blog/energy/ten-serious-nuclear-fusion-projects-making-progress-around-the-world/2897
Check this out from Prof Steve Jones’ science blog in the Telegraph, July of last year:-
“but global warming is not a product of the human imagination; or no more so than any other scientific claims for – like them – it depends on its data, the accuracy of which has been affirmed by the inquiry into the leaked East Anglia documents. The subject has, alas, become the home of boring rants by obsessives.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/steve-jones/7887202/Gods-floods-and-global-warming.html
The accuracy of global warming data was confirmed by the leaked East Anglia documents?
I believe the phrase for someone commissioning a report from someone that is a foregone conclusion because they are both committed to advocating the cause of one side of the argument is ‘gross moral turpitude’. I think even Franz Kafka would have problems getting his head around the concept of two ardent proponents of ‘global warming’ contriving to produce an ‘independent’ report that advocates shutting down the arguments of anyone who disagrees with them.
The Prime Minister suggested the BBC’s relationship with politics should be part of the inquiry he has commissioned. It shouldn’t. The issue of BBC bias is so profound, so immense, and certain people on the commission with such a vested interested in perpetuating that bias, it calls for a separate Commission of Inquiry altogether with a panel with a proven track record of commitment to standards and professional integrity.
In the process of maintaining the 24 hour assault on the “Murdoch Empire” (& by implication Cameron),just after 4am R5’s “up All Night” went to Australia to interview Alan Knight, a professor of journalism in Sydney. He was of course sympathetic to the BBC’s cause & in addition to bad mouthing Murdoch he provided a good reason why the BBC should follow Prof Jones’s suggestion – climate change deniers are “committed right wingers”.
“committed right wingers”. PMSL ? so how do you become a Uncommitted right winger? I mean it’s easy for the Beebles all they do is spout off about Marx/socialism and what not then take profitable contracts to do voice overs for insurance companies and toilet rolls
commercials !
There is something psychologically defensive about becoming angry with your opponents, demonise them. It’s not enough to be comfortable holding different views, they need anger to compensate for their fear the other view might be right.
A real scientist would delight in moving forward, improving our knowledge. A real human being would be pleased to discover the world is not facing catastrophe after all. But not this dear boy. He wants us to be facing catastrophe, so we need him, which of course we don’t.
He has to silence any opposition, demonise any who think the facts are other than what he says they are. He is a classic narcissist case: a weak man dressed up as a strong man.
Alinksy tactics are good for science, too, I see.
Alinsky: “in the war against social evils there are no rules of fair play”
..as long as you agree with him exactly what are these “social evils”, what are their causes, and don’t get in his way as he seeks to eliminate them. The Baader-Meinhoff group followed the same line of thought as I recall. Capitalism is evil, solution: kidnap capitalists and kill them.
Way to go, Geneticist Jones.
Great detective work-or at least a comprehensive ability to join the dots and “follow the evidence”.
Like one big monkey puzzle tree isn`t it? The regulators and those that are supposed to be monitored seem to be partners or ex-members of the “other side” -which is often the identikit skid mark!
Now the BBC want all this shaken out-let`s look at who, how and why they`re all fitted to comment on “Murdochs Bias”..and let`s see just how a Patten was so easily able to schmooze round H.K, Tory central
the EU before falling to rest from the monkey puzzle I mention.
This liberal barn of theirs really needs a muck-out. Steve Jones is however unqualified in agricultural studies so can burn the gonads of drosophila instead!
James Delingpole, ‘Telegraph’ blog, is on the case:-
“‘BBC’s biased climate science reporting isn’t biased enough’ claims report ”
[Excerpt]:-
“As Biased BBC notes, it has been five years since the BBC officially abandoned all pretence that it was adopting a neutral position on ‘Climate Change’. In a 2007 BBC Trust policy report, it wrote:
The BBC has held a high level seminar with some of the best scientific experts (on whose and what measurement) and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of consensus.
“This anti-heretic policy it has been pursuing with Torquemada-like fervour ever since. Though Dr Jones’s report argues that the BBC should from henceforward give less space to sceptics, it’s difficult to imagine quite how it could possibly do so.”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100098066/bbcs-biased-climate-science-reporting-isnt-biased-enough-claims-report/
‘Express’ Comment:
“THE BBC SHOULD NOT JUST PEDDLE FASHIONABLE VIEWS ”
[Opening extract]:
“ANYONE who has followed the BBC’s coverage of the climate change debate in any detail will surely be puzzled by a recommendation that it should give less weight to the views of sceptics.”
http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/260139/The-BBC-should-not-just-peddle-fashionable-views
Today tackled this topic and as usual, confusing the issue and missing the point.
Sarah Montague’s introduction set the scene:
“We usually try to be balanced on this programme, by giving both sides of an argument. It’s often a good way of testing an idea as well. Not that it always works.” (stop tittering at the back)
“But it’s an approach that has been criticised by genetics professor Steve Jones. He was asked by the BBC to look at its coverage of science, and while he said there was much to praise, he did suggest that attempts at balance in science often gave undue weight to marginal opinions which would make the listeners perceive an issue to be more controversial than it is, and one of the examples was of global warming.”
Guests, from the Today website:
Lord May, former chief scientific adviser to the UK government and president of the Royal Society, and Connie St Louis, science writer and director of City’s science journalism MA, [discuss the dilemma over balance in science. ]
Perhaps they’ve started following Steve Jones’s recommendation already, as they don’t seem to be representing both sides of an argument.
Lord May. “I thought Steve Jones’s report was absolutely superb, and I completely agree with him that the BBC is high quality, clear, accurate, impartial, basically the best in the world, (No tittering, I said)
while at the same time I very much share some of the constructive criticisms that Steve gave, and as you just said, well intended but over-rigid application of editorial guidelines on impartiality which too often lead to giving equal weight to evidence-based scientific fact over opinion, creating a false balance between fact and opinion.” (I think he meant that the other way round)
Connie starts off promisingly: ”Scientists have become some sort of priesthood, what they say should be scrutinised.” But it was a false start. “I think having Lord Lawson to talk about climate change when it is a scientific fact, if you look at the amount of time he’s given to discuss what has been scientifically debated and scrutinised, then yes.”
So they’re both agreed that the climate change consensus is scientific fact, done and dusted. The discussion is now only about whether wrong-thinking people such as Lord Lawson should be allowed to have their “opinions” aired in a way that gives them undue weight. Perhaps they should be allowed, but with a caveat such as “Here’s a view from a climate change denier, don’t take too much notice lest the established scientific certainty be undermined.”
But wait!
Lord May is back explaining that actually scientists do not ‘do certainty.’ So “opinion” is not the exact opposite of “scientific fact” after all,
and we’re left with confusion, and back to the unresolved issue of how the BBC should interpret their obligation for impartiality.
Rigidly allowing the devil equal billing with the angel, or worse, using positive discrimination to rectify a perceived imbalance, the arbiter being the BBC.
The BBC also gives too much space to junk TV like Eastenders, Casualty and Flog It!, and teeny-pop music radio too.
Can we expect the trustees to reduce this avalanche of dumbed down dross?
No.
How about Mr Cameron calling for an enquiry on how HIS OWN GOVERNMENT concerning the whole climate issue. They have lied through their proverbial teeth on all things climate to perpetuate the myth that man is responsible, and so their own nest eggs, or should I say, turbine subsidies. Let’s start with DC himself, i.e. SamCam’s father.
I think the only course of action to get the BBC to amend its ways is either direct and very public appeals to Chris Patten, or more fundamental, taking the BBC to court in a class action citing that they are in violation of their Charter requiring them to be impartial, established in law by parliament, for which we have paid them to adhere to (by legal force).
“…taking the BBC to court in a class action citing that they are in violation of their Charter requiring them to be impartial, established in law by parliament, for which we have paid them to adhere to (by legal force).”
That’s not a bad idea becauae even if it fails the publicity surrounding it will surely open up a whole tanker full of shipping containers, full of crates, full of boxes, full of cans of worms.
The BBC have 3.6 billion a year plus 79% total media control and the whole of the UK left behind them, fatty won’t move against the BBC !so not sure how we would ever get them to change their ways as years of shouting and screaming plus lawsuits and F.O.I’S has achieved er sod all except the usual “we are great so there “!
And if I am not mistaken, the official Conservative Party line is that the Beeboid Corporation’s outpourings are not politically biased.
I read the Jones report and found it, for the most part, a decent piece of work. That said, I can’t really comment on the BBC’s science reporting as a whole, although I would have to say that, in Fergus Walsh, Pallab Ghosh and Victoria Gill, they have three excellent reporters who can communicate scientific stories in a lively manner and make them palatable to half-wits like me.
But large swathes of his ‘independent’ report appear to be unduly partisan and even self-contradictory.
Moreover, the language Jones uses to describe sceptics is not helpful; one infers from the report that he thinks sceptics are fringe lunatics. According to polls, MMGW sceptics are, however, a surprisingly large constituency in Britain. And besides, scepticism in journalism is healthy, surely?
On the subject of impartiality, Jones makes a perfectly valid point about “equality of knowledge”: he used the GM crops debate to suggest that a non-scientist (i.e. a Friends of the Earth campaigner) who is not in full possession of the facts and spouts untruths to support his/her case, should not be afforded equal air-time as, say, a GM expert. Quite right.
By extension, that means George Monbiot and Caroline Lucas – neither of whom are climatologists, never mind scientists – should not be afforded air-time to talk about global warming.
This is a silly argument, of course. But Jones appears to be falling into the trap that ‘sceptics’ and ‘deniers’ do not believe that any climate change is taking place (he implicitly says as much in his report) and we should burn as much oil as is humanly possible.
So, does this mean that sceptics can be shoved into one corner and largely ignored while MMGW ‘accepters’ are free to tell us we are all going to Hell in a handcart and ascribe every weather event to ‘climate change’?
We do not know the extent at which climate change is occurring nor whether humans can change it; nor do we really have a clue what the consequences will be. But much of the BBC’s output is openly alarmist and speaks of imminent Armageddon; reports often lack any form of balancing opinions or more tempered prognoses. The BBC has unashamedly become a outlet for MMGW activism.
Jones also asserts:
“The denial by researchers hired by the tobacco lobby that smoking causes lung cancer is notorious. More recently it has been shown that those funded by pharmaceutical companies tend to give more favourable accounts of a drug than do those whose grants come from independent sources.
And the trillions of dollars sloshing around the world in the form of research grants, tax breaks, massive government subsidies, huge salaries et al have not in the slightest way influenced the debate on man-made global-warming?
Agreed about Ghosh, but the Beeboids you’re talking about don’t cover any science issues which affect legilsation and which are used in attempts to control industry and people’s lives.
Indeed, David. That is why I spent just one paragraph on them and another 234,000 words on Jones’s more controversial findings.
Yes, sorry, Jeremy, I meant to say “Unfortunately” those Beeboids don’t cover this issue.
davidcoethica David Connor BBC News – Climate change ‘threatens peace’, UN official warnshttp://bit.ly/npzNzB #sustainability
Quite read that tweet headline differently at first.
Carry on.
Funny they say that…”a UN official said”…everyone else has reported the lack of consensus!
http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/science/environment/un-fails-on-climate-change-consensus-1.1103173
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/21/un-security-council-climate-change
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/20/us-climate-un-idUSTRE76J7QY20110720
Also, they say (with pictures)
“Crises such as that in Somalia could be far worse as a result of climate change”
But as pounce told us earlier it should read
“Crises such as that in Somalia are far worse as a result of stupid Islamic fundamentalist/corrupt muslims”
What a great site this is!
If you include Professor Norbury, Dr Delingpole and all the other experts that contribute to this thread, you get as good a science degree as anywhere I`ve studied!
Why then do we get the Gores and the Dr Jones(Aqua song wasn`t it?) to peddle their threadbare impressions of scientific thinking-only one reason..the BBC wish it to be so, hence we have the most scientifically illiterate population we`ve ever known!
The Chinese and Indians will be quaking as we tilt at turbines that won`t propel-even with assorted Beeboids blowing hard on them!
Thank You Robin!
The biggest of the many lies is that there is a “consensus” of scientific opinion that we face catastrophic man-made warming. BBC trots this one out routinely, and presumes it closes down the need for futher timewasting on disagreement (cue picture of swivel-eyed loon)
The BBC and indeed Cameron’s DEC evangelists trot out the word “consensus” like it’s Green Kryptonite – causing all opposition stumbles to its knees, robbed of intellectual strength.
The more you look into it, the consensus is based on following the money. So much money and career depends on the money flowing from Big Green, it is hardly suprising many scientists avert their eyes and take the shilling. Followed by shining-eyed young Maoists of the Green movement.
Hello hello what have we here? The BBC would be very interested in the graph below.
We have been repeatedly promised that extreme events like droughts are and will become ever more common and widespread and severe, you have all seen and heard thousands of BBC reports stating the consensus position that drought events go hand in hand with CAGW.
Look closely at the graph, a graph you will NEVER EVER see on the BBC, do you see an increase in drought severity? The BBC has in effect spent countless millions of pounds lying through its corporate teeth with Blackharabinshukman in lead roles.
This is the reality of the BBC, this is the true nature of the beast. They peddle lies, knowingly peddle lies and they will NEVER issue a retraction because their fabricated CAGW illusion would crumple. Now the BBC almost certainly got their propaganda from sources like the met office/Al Gore/greenpiss/fiends of the earth/WWF and others have they once placed proof before us? Have you ever seen the BBC produce actual proof of their claims?
This is the consensus at work, this is the grubby reality, the lies and the propaganda, the cynical manipulation perpetrated by a supposed impartial broadcaster that even now wishes to completely blackball sceptics. Now you could say that the BBC are lying crooked scum, I couldnt possibly comment other than to whole heartedly agree with that sentiment.
I hope Mr beeboid Gregory sees the graph.
Oooops!
Hat tip and thanks to the incomparable antigreen website, a superb compendium of all things to do with the reality of CAGW.
Remember the BBC ‘scientific experiment’ supposedly recreating the greenhouse efect in a bottle? Pumping vast quanties of CO2 at pressure into a closed container and seeing a slight temperature increase and therefore supposedly confirming the hundred year old experiment? Of course the amount of CO2 and the relative pressure was massively above that of the planets atmosphere so the experiment was a joke. Below is the reality, a reality the ‘impartial’ BBC will NEVER allow to be seen.
Greenhouse Gas Theory Trashed in replicated Lab Experiment
by John O’Sullivan
Professor Nahle of Monterrey, Mexico backed by a team of international scientists has faithfully recreated a famous experiment from 1909 to confirm that the greenhouse effect cannot cause global warming.
Astonishingly, the 1909 greenhouse gas experiment first performed by Professor Robert W. Wood at John Hopkins University hadn’t been replicated for a century. This despite over $100 billion spent by the man-made global warming industry trying to prove its case that carbon dioxide is a dangerous atmospheric pollutant.
The analogy had been that greenhouse gases (e.g. CO2) act like the glass in a greenhouse trapping heat in Earth’s atmosphere and if they build up (due to human industrial emissions) the planet would dangerously overheat.
At the Biology Cabinet laboratories Professor Nahle was able to confirm the astounding findings: Wood was right all along. After peer-review the results confirm that the so-called ‘greenhouse effect’ is solely due to the blockage of convective heat transfer within the environment in which it is contained i.e. as in this case, a lab flask.
Indeed, it is the glass of the lab flask (or ‘greenhouse’) that caused the “trapped” radiation all along. The flask (or greenhouse) being what scientists refer to as a ‘closed system’; while Earth’s atmosphere isn’t closed at all but rather open to space allowing heat energy to freely escape.
Nahle’s findings shoot holes in claims of Professor Pratt of Stanford University whose own replication of Wood’s experiment was touted as the first official reconstruction of Wood’s test for a century. Pratt claimed he had disproved Wood’s findings.
“This is the reason that I decided to repeat the experiment of Professor Pratt to either falsify or verify his results and those of Professor Wood,“ says the Mexican professor at the Biology Cabinet.
The Monterrey science research institute also recreated Wood’s test into the effect of longwave infrared radiation trapped inside a greenhouse. Unlike Pratt it found that Wood’s findings were correct, absolutely valid and systematically repeatable. The Bio Cab man affirms, “ the greenhouse effect does not exist as it is described in many didactic books and articles.”
Put simply, one of the aforementioned professors has their reputation perilously on the line and Nahle is gunning for an explanation from his U.S. Rival. A clue to the outcome: Pratt isn’t even qualified in science – he’s a (warmist) mathematician specializing in computers.
ENJOY 😀
Excellent piece Robin. Very informative and succinct.
There is a consensus on the issue=we`re not clever or motivated enough to look into any other possibility than the one we`re well paid to parrot.
Populist=urgh…the oiks are at the door and speaking sense.
Elitist=any effort to sift, assess,discern or judge that might make them get out of the office and be judged by the results of what they say.
Fairness=sharing out our money amogst those unable to afford the gated community that they are able to tell us about from the intercom.
Inclusion=Mixing rat poisin and cocaine in among the sugar and telling us to sort it out. And let them watch and advise on how best to pass it off as talcum powder for the kids.
Lessons will be learned, we are where we are, regrettable appropriate or other…and so it goes
One niggle Robin. If Alison Hastings vigorously defended the one Panorama that was actually fair, impartial and accurate, (the one about the Mavi Marmara) then she’s okay by me.
Yes, saves me from pointing it out too! I think the update needs to be updated!
Not FT. No comment 😉
dpcarrington Damian Carrington big twitter welcome to BBC’s very smart richard black @enviroblack(and his monkey)
All comments are evidently going to be those of the BBC.
Speaking of whom…
How hard is life with no qualifications? We at @bbc5live want you to get in touch. Please tweet me back or email jonathan.savage@bbc.co.uk
A reprise from ‘Autonomous Mind’:
BBC, Prof Steve Jones and the push for censorship
BBC, Prof Steve Jones and the push for censorship
A comment links to a Bishop Hill thread (on ‘influences’)that has provoked a very robust set of exchanges between folk.
Usually I scan, but it really made a gripping read.
Were it that such debate was possible within the BBC and its circle.
The irony of course being, as these fine folk argue, the establishment is dismantling the mechanisms for free speech and debate they cherish and practice.
The Bishop Hill post concerns Steve Jones’s wife Norma Percy. Several commenters doubted whether it was fair to make anything out of the fact that she’s a filmmaker who, according to the Independent, is largely financed by the BBC.
I wanted to find out more about her highly-regarded documentaries, especially as two of them tackle the I/P conflict. The Fifty Years War, made by her in 1998, was considered to be the least biased out of several other, much more biased films on the subject. According to Camera, Percy’s was definitely the best of a bad bunch.
Her other film, ‘Israel and the Arabs: Elusive Peace’ (2005) has attracted some favourable reviews on this website, but that doesn’t mean much since the authors are unknown.
It is a shame that Steve Jones has reached the conclusion he evidently has, for reasons too numerous to mention. But it’s unfortunate that the BBC has been encouraged to use the impartiality delusion to justify giving airtime (or denying airtime) to opinions they don’t like.