As seasoned B-BBC readers are all too aware, the BBC has an unpleasant habit of editing elements of its stories, without changing the ‘last updated’ timestamp in the article header – an activity known as stealth editing.
The corporation was at it again today in its coverage of the failed Russian mission to send a probe to Mars and return with material from the planet’s surface. The Phobos-Grunt launch saw the probe trapped in Earth orbit and gravity slowly bringing it back through the atmosphere. Today was the day the splashdown happened, and Auntie’s science correspondant, Jonathan Amos, made sure the write up contained suitably dramatic imagery to capture the spectacle of re-entry.
Only the image used was nothing to do with the re-entry and was a radar image with colouration added and it was taken five days ago. The Watts Up With That? blog highlighted the BBC’s sloppiness and explained how radar images are in fact colour-free.
Sometime this afternoon, after WUWT published their blog posting, the BBC replaced the image on the story as you can see below.
The sharp-eyed of you out there will notice that the BBC has tried to hide the alteration by not updating the ‘last updated’ timestamp. Yet again we have an example of stealth editing. In this case it is just a change of image. However, often it is the copy that is altered and at times it is done in a way that changes the emphasis or context of a story so the revised article reads very differently to the original.
Is it just sloppy web management, or is it a case of, “Nothing to see here, we didn’t get anything wrong and correct it after a blog in the US highlighted our mistake”? Either way, it has created a niche for a website called News Sniffer which records many of the BBC’s article revisions for comparison purposes.
It is a terrible indictment of the BBC that because of its stealth editing behaviour and habit of quietly tinkering with news articles, a resource like News Sniffer has become so important.
I’ve been following this story for a while and what I noticed was the difference the bBC reported the US and Russian sat drops. According to the bBC the US Sat (5 tonnes) posed a risk to life yet the Russian one (13 tonnes) would burn up harmlessly on re-entry. As they say on the adverts “every little bit helps” in the continuing character assassination of the US.
The worry now must be that sites such as Watt’s Up With That are regularly monitored by the BBC, UAE, the Met Office and other nodes on the Common Purpose network, with a view to carefully altering the climate change propaganda to get around the newly-revealed facts.
Old words from websites, books, and scientific papers would thus be dumped into memory holes and replaced with newly-generated drivel.
Where this is impossible – eg already-purchased Attenborough DVDs – then new scares can be invented to increase net climate hysteria (eg tropical rain forests discovered at the North Pole), which Mr Watts would take time to disprove. While he was doing that new green taxes would be applied to ease the growing “problem”.
Actually I think these kind of tactics have been in use for years…..
Ian wrote:
“The worry now must be that sites such as Watt’s Up With That are regularly monitored by the BBC, UAE, the Met Office and other nodes on the Common Purpose network, with a view to carefully altering the climate change propaganda to get around the newly-revealed facts. “
Funny you should mentiont that,here isa little something from this weeks Economist:
Counting the cost of calamities
Staggeringly, your link revealed that the IPCC has failed to establish a link between tropical cyclones and climate change. But the Economist does at least claim that natural disasters are getting more expensive, thanks to economic growth in the disaster zones. That should please the beeb, who can excise the conclusion, that such growth also enables disasters to be mitigated. And the IPCC can say that carbon offsets will make disasters cheaper as they will reverse this economic growth. With UEA drawing a graph to prove this point, everyone can save face.
Great posting this!
Like Craigs early analysis of language used by Beeb staff, and the interruption quotient for Tories cf Labour: this gets to the crux of the BBCs devious and relativist outlook.
No doubt, it trawls its critics and slips in its “amendments” as it goes along-with no acknowledgement of errors made and consequent distortions allowed to fester.
Classic LibLab concept that truth is a moveable feast, and can be muddled and patched on the hoof-but only when it`s clear that they`ve ben lying through their teeth.
Habitual Arthr Daleys aren`t they?…and at least he lived off his own wits. The BBC just pimp off their critics, and get to charge them for doing their editing for them.
Very much the UEA model writ large…
‘an unpleasant habit of editing elements of its stories, without changing the ‘last updated’ timestamp in the article header – an activity known as stealth editing.’
I’m interested in the ‘editorial guidelines’ on this because, personally, I am uncomfortable with the precedent that can still be set if even abiding by the statement above.
I have an outstanding complaint on a series of blatant inaccuracies (borne of not having a clue by taking a punt based on agenda only) in a ‘report’ that went out main news… and then… as the actual facts dribbled out… was quietly, as the BBC put it… ‘evolved’.
Not good enough.
The story broke, and they plain misreported, and most saw and swallowed that. Some daft notation later on is in no way adequate to rectify or atone.
On top of BBC Editors apparently now allowed to put out on the BBC whatever they feel like as ‘not speaking for the BBC’, to have the BBC apply to put out whatever it fancies, so long as the historical record is altered retroactively to ‘fit’, is not a way to inculcate trust.
Nah. I think you will all find that they “got it about right “.
Devious and reletivist – that’s about right.
The BBC’s (lack of) attention to detail and strategic omissions set the tone for their output – spiced up with the occasional blatant distortion – it seems rare these days that one reads/sees/hears a piece and doesn’t feel the need to scratch an itch and cross check.
Some of their stuff make my skin creep.