NUCLEAR SKEW

A Biased BBC reader draws our attention to some interesting information concerning one of our ..ahem..favourite BBC propagandists….

“For further analysis of how the BBC’s environment correspondent Richard Black can misread and skew data in regard to climate change go here. Now, in a news report of major importance regarding Anglo-French cooperation in the future of nuclear power, his fingerprints are all over the BBC’s web page report here

There are three mini headlines at the top of the BBC’s web page. They are:

UK and France sign nuclear deal (the real, important news) a treaty signed by the prime minister and French president no less (not known recently as a loving couple) which will create ‘a number of commercial deals in the nuclear energy field, worth more than £500m and creating 1,500 UK jobs… and even,‘…. helps to deliver our emission reductions targets..’

Given equal prominence is this: UK nuclear subsidies ‘unlawful’ (by Mr Black) Wow, this is big news! But wait, hold! Read on. It’s not a fact. And it’s not even new. It‘s certainly not news. It’s simply another Greenpeace eco-fanatic move reported last January, now recycled by Black as a headline.

He starts: “Green energy campaigners are attempting to block new nuclear power stations in the UK by complaining to the European Commission that government plans contravene EU competition regulations.” It’s an old complaint. But on the BBC it gets equal news billing. Which conventional newspaper would publish a story first published a month ago, as a news headline at the top of its front page? The editor would get the boot. But BBC headline readers will get the message.

Black and the BBC doesn’t finish rubbishing the nuclear plans there. Its next equal prominence headline is: Nuclear power ‘has small support’. (by Mr Black). His story is about a global poll, ‘…..BBC News, polled 23,231 people in 23 countries from July to September this year… (wait for it)…. ‘..several months after an earthquake and giant tsunami devastated Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power station.’ The question asked by the pollsters, while the terrible events and clean-up in Japan were still being actively reported, started with, ‘Agree: Nuclear power is relatively safe….’going on to ..’..should build more plants.’

If you continue to read halfway down all the detail, you will find, ‘In the UK, support for building new reactors has risen from 33% to 37%.’ A view from nuclear spokesman John Rich is provided right at the end of the piece including, ‘..(nuclear) facts warrant a better educational effort from industry, from governments and from journalists.’

From ‘green’ journalists too? Skew must be joking.”

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6 Responses to NUCLEAR SKEW

  1. tinks says:

    The guy needs to be certified.

    BTW I’m in favour of nuclear. If it’s good enough for the French it’s good enough for us. Pity that after years of hullabaloo we seem to have lost our lead/expertise needing to import it.

       1 likes

  2. cjhartnett says:

    Professor Ian Fell said today that he believed 23,000 nuclear engineers are needed to get us up to scratch after the appalling drift since Hinckley Point in 1995…the last time we actually built anything nuclear.
    Surely, there has got to be some case to get a few vulnerable youngsters off the dole or pointless courses, and into courses that-unusually have jobs pretty much guaranteed at the end.
    Or are we to hope that the Danes will send us a few windmills made of recycled cardboard instead?

       1 likes

  3. London Calling says:

    France generates around 90% of its power through nuclear – hurrah – most of it is on the Channel coast facing us, so we breathe it in anyway. Laughably, French EDF are among the biggest greenie propagandists, infiltrated by corporate PR greenies – the worst.
    British Nuclear – 50 year unblemished safety record, yet greenie journo’s repeat the same mantra – Fukishima (irrelevant – no UK Tsunami risk) Chernobyl (Soviet Empire mismanagement decades ago) and Three Mile Island. (don’t know the story but it certanly doesn’t warrant changing over to Windmills)
    Greanpeace is truly evil, screwing up our energy policies and brainwashing the halfwits produced by our so-called educational system. Nuclear power?- safe cheap and plentiful, what’s not to like?

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  4. Teddy Bear says:

    I see the BBC include in their article on the nuclear deal this little snippet The move comes 11 months after a tsunami in Japan wrecked the nearby Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, leaking radioactive material into the air and sea. 
    It has no bearing to the preceding paragraph or the following one, and can’t remember when the UK was last hit by a tsunami. I suppose we are lucky they didn’t include anything about Chernobyl. 

    Contrasting this with an article today about a proposed windfarm in the Scilly Isles I didn’t read anything about the inefficiency or unreliability of windfarms, which is far more likely to be of concern to residents there, or anything about the one that burst into flames following high winds.

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  5. My Site (click to edit) says:

    UK nuclear subsidies ‘unlawful’ (by Mr Black) Wow, this is big news! But wait, hold! Read on. It’s not a fact. And it’s not even new. It‘s certainly not news. It’s simply another Greenpeace eco-fanatic move reported last January, now recycled by Black as a headline.’

    What the BBC ‘headlines’ in its ‘reporting’, in ‘quotes’ is now a bad joke in professional media circles, and if via Black merely inevitable.

    His filleting here, especially via a quoted (unverified) attempt at a slap down, is sublime…

    http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/2/17/science-media-centre-and-the-bbc-guidelines.html

       0 likes

  6. John Horne Tooke says:

    We are not the only people who are suspcious of Black and his activism

    http://blackswhitewash.com/2012/01/11/man-of-mystery-2/

       0 likes