When Richard Black or Roger Harrabin deride climate sceptics as ignorant non-scientists ask yourself exactly what qualifications do they have for the job as chief environmental journalists at the BBC?
Roger Harrabin might find a little difficulty when formulating an answer……but interesting that he had already developed a dislike for fox hunters and right wing politics….so that’s a couple of ticks in the box at the BBC job interview….the final requirement might be an ability to ignore tricky questions…and it looks like he can do that too….
I enjoyed reading English, particularly in my first summer term, which was spent reading Shakespeare and punting. What class of degree did I get? I’ve just told my wife I would ignore that question.
I didn’t go to lectures after my first term as I thought you would get more credit for thinking for yourself than for being told what to think. I worked for three hours in the mornings and that was it.
I was more interested in student politics on a college than a university level and was elected President of the JCR. Previously the Junior Common Room had appeared to be captured by factions interested in supporting Nicaragua or promoting foxhunting.
If you could have a non-partisan, technocratic JCR, you would do much more to support the lot of ordinary undergraduates. We were incredibly privileged but some unpleasantnesses could have been ironed out.
I started a college magazine which I edited for a time. I realized then what you could do with the printed word.
We did exert a very substantial pressure.
But of course Harrabin does not need to know anything because he has a, em, guiding hand when draughting his reports..…Jo Abbess
False theories about climate change abound. Most people get their views from the mainstream media, and the problem of poor public communications on science and technology will not be resolved any time soon – because journalists and commentators often lack basic science training. Their views don’t count – but they are unaware of that. Their balanced assessments are often worthless. They cannot be the arbiters of truth, for they know not where to pitch their fulcrum.
Climate Change policy is decided by people who are similarly often lacking scientific and engineering backgrounds. How can they be expected to make the best decisions when they cannot separate in their minds industrial lobbying spin from fact ? They cannot know how ridiculous their pronouncements on energy and climate change sound to those who are genuine experts.
Discussing environmental journalism with some green friends, the name Roger Harrabin is mentioned, and views about whether he is “on side” or not.
Opinions are voiced that journalists are trained to be too relativist in their outlook and so cannot be trusted to be accurate about science.
I come to peace. I encounter God amongst the houseplants in the corner of the Meeting Room at the Quaker House in Square Ambiorix in Brussels, Belgium.
Emails are “leaked” and I become villified and scorned around the world for questioning Roger Harrabin about the framing and headline of an article he has written.
The new zero-carbon, zero-propaganda, zero-warfare, economy needs to flourish.
It is time to take back intellectual rigour and integrity and tell the truth about climate change and global warming.
This is a call to activism. Whatever peaceful means and methods you can employ to further the truth, I believe you should consider whether you feel the imperative to do so.
I am Public Friend Number One, but that doesn’t stop me being the target of a stream of vicious invective.
I am only rarely paranoid – after all, I know exactly who and what I’m opposing – inaccuracies as pernicious as racism, and as embedded as violence against women and minors.
I did not choose this role, but I have been obliged by circumstance to conduct a “war on error”.
Harribin the Horrible from the Clan McMoonbat sounds like he was a little bit of a political activist whilst at that Moonbat college. still politically active then roger?
if my kids ended up with a degree in english i’d disown them as clueless idiots. imagine how embarrassing it would be when friends kids ended up with degrees in medicine or law and you have to say yeah my kids got a degree in english
keep up the good work roger ya thick twat 🙂
“I thought you would get more credit for thinking for yourself than for being told what to think”.
Thanks, Roger, you hilariously hypocritical twat, we’ll remember that one. Because, for once, you “thought” right!
And somewhat ironic, don’t you think, to then go and work for an organisation which tries ” to tell people what to think”.
Looking at the few (and reducing) outings these guys make into interactivity to share their insights, they seem to have have moved from laughing stocks to barely scraping a handful of acolytes in support before anyway having to get the mods to close things down when confronted by facts when someone tired of the dross shows up their latest idiocy. As with the cherry vultures in politics trying to dredge up a ‘Daily Mail readers’ or ‘Republicans’ counter, the best still being managed is someone embarrassing themselves with a ‘you’re in the pay of big oil!’. Which probably explains the early closing thereafter to avoid things going downhill thereafter.
I’ve commented on this before on this site. It doesn’t matter in what discipline you get your degree – or whether you get a degree at all – to be a decent journalist. It’s not necessarily easy but journalists have a duty (and since they see themselves as “professionals” – a professional duty) to convey the facts of a news item and/or the background to that item as openly and honestly as they can: comment is another thing entirely. Ironically it was C P Scott of the Guardian (the BBC in print) who said that “comment is free, but facts are sacred”.
In other words anyone reporting on a particular subject does not have to be a certificated expert in that subject. All he has to do is seek out those who may be experts from all sides of a particular issue and lay out the facts so gathered before his audience. “Comment” comes later but the comment should be able to be viewed by the audience in the light of the facts.
Unforunately, the BBC employs people as “journalists” or “analysts” who are intelligent enough to make the distinction between facts and comment but have decided – before the “facts” are in – that some facts are not worthy of reporting or not even worth while finding or, once found, are deliberately misreported. For Harrabin, for example, the “facts” of AGW scepticism are such facts. He might make the odd reference to the existence of persons, even bona fide scientists, who cleave to old-fashioned principles that science is not a matter of creating some wished-for “truth” by selecting convenient facts (or, more to the point, manufacturing such facts), creating a computer model and stating that the results of the model are “settled science”. However Harrabin, in the bully pulpit given him by the BBC misleads the great British public as to the facts of both AGW science and the deplorable behaviour of climate “scientists” (as disclosed among numerous other places in Climategates I and II).
It’s worse actually. Not just content to skew the facts in his own work, Harrabin is apparently one of those who convinced the BBC that its “journalism” when dealing with AGW – or climate change generally – can and should bias all reportage to support and report the “facts” of AGW (and currently “sustainability”) and suppress opposing facts or any doubts as to the “facts” of AGW or “justified” “sustainability” panic.
Also, as I’ve commented before but which IMHO bears repeating, there are enough “scientists” out there (or journalists with a scientific background) who are just as happy to mislead the BBC audience as do Harrabin, Black and Shukman. After all, what was the discipline of those who chaired or advised the faux inquiries into the conduct of, among others, the climate fraudsters at UEA? Who is the president of the Royal Society and is not just a scientist but a winner (for his work in genetics not climate”science”) of the Nobel Prize? Being a scientist has not stopped Nurse attempting to rubbish scepticism of climate change “science” or his immediate two predecessors as presidents of the RS, damning scepticism of AGW as being (effectively) akin to paedophilia.
So don’t look for a reporter with scientific credentials as a solution to BBC bias on science because you’ll be disappointed. Look instead for someone who has those virtues which have all but disappeared from the BBC: honesty and integrity.
BBC employs people as “journalists” or “analysts” who are intelligent enough to make the distinction between facts and comment
The Space Special Interest group of Mensa made a complaint to the BBC Trust. We found that the main problem with the morons at the BBC was that they where unable to distinguish between facts and assumptions, in fact it is my understanding that the Mensa member who contacted Roger Harrabin found out that he was at the BBC seminar that decided to promote the assumptions as facts and that this is where future legal or parliamentary action against the BBC is possible. In the scientific method, once you make an assumption, you then try and prove whether that assumption is right or wrong. The facts and observations prove that the AGW theory is bullshit.