Excellent piece by Melanie Phillips well worth a read if you have not already seen it….
“The BBC has expended considerable effort, not to mention a very large amount of licence fee-payers’ money, upon suppressing evidence of its biased reporting.
In 2004, prompted by persistent concerns about anti-Israel bias, a report was written by broadcasting executive Malcolm Balen on the BBC’s Middle East coverage. The BBC has spent more than a third of a million pounds resisting legal efforts to force it to publish this report, which remains secret to this day.
In a report published in 2007, the BBC claimed that the previous year it had held a ‘high level seminar’ on climate change attended by ‘some of the best scientific experts’. As a result, said this report, the BBC had
‘come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus [on anthropogenic climate change]’.
A member of the public, Tony Newbery, mounted a five year attempt under Freedom of Information law to force the BBC to divulge the names of the ‘scientific experts’ who had persuaded it into this astounding abandonment of objectivity in reporting on the issue of climate change.
The BBC spent thousands of pounds blocking Mr Newbery’s action, which finally failed last Friday, implacably refusing to make those names publicly available. Now we know why.
For an enterprising blogger, Maurizio Morabito, has uncovered the list of these 28 names through searching an internet cache on the website of the International Broadcasting Trust, which helped set up the seminar with the BBC. This list shows that in fact only a tiny number of these secret participants were actually current scientists – and most or all of those were climate change alarmists, including the director of the Tyndall Centre which was at the eye of the infamous ‘Climategate’ email storm. The rest of them were activists or journalists.
So the BBC censored its journalism on climate change on the basis of a seminar of climate change partisans, zealots and assorted distinctly unauthoritative others, whom it wholly misleadingly described as some of the ‘best scientific experts’. It then spent thousands of pounds of public money trying to conceal this fact on the spurious grounds — as with the Balen report – that journalistic processes had to remain private…”
Melanie Phillips and the Daily Mail? Some people (naming no names) are going to find they can dismiss it without reading.
‘naming no names’
Pop it on twitter, and copy in Andrew Neil. Or get it posted on Ariel, or in the studio coffee bar.
I’d give it 5 mins, give or take.
Ask Lord McAlpine.
And those who form an opinion of something without bothering to read it/watch it or inform themselves as to the content, are known as clueless; ignorant; stupid; idiotic; foolhardy; foolish; doltish and utterly unworthy of listening to at all.
By their own admission, their own beliefs and opinions are baseless and without any factual merit whatsoever and such people’s rants ought to be dismissed as completely valueless.
Every day, and in every way, the BBC displays its biased, arrogant “impartial” broadcasting, to a largely unsuspecting world, who still believe that “auntie” will look after them, and has their best interests at heart.
It achieves both those ends, in a sinister, secret ideological kind of way.
It is a corporate, untrustworthy bully, and should be rent asunder, sharpish.
Excellent analytical piece by Melanie Phillips; and very good to see that she checks out ‘B-BBC’ site and makes this reference:
“Indeed, the 2006 climate change seminar wasn’t the half of it. The Biased BBC site has uncovered a number of other seminars the IBT organised and that the BBC attended between 2004 and 2008.”
http://phillipsblog.dailymail.co.uk/2012/11/the-real-bbc-scandal.html
And her blogsite is here:-
http://melaniephillips.com/
Melanie Phillips, as Roland Deschain says, is routinely dismissed and ridiculed by the Left, because she is too intelligent, incisive and well-informed. They have no other possible response. She can make mincemeat of their tissue-thin beliefs and they know it.
It’s the standard tactic of the lettuce leaf Left to mock and shout down people they cannot out-think. Miss Phillips terrifies them.
Could this be why she has only been on Question Time twice in as many years?
It’s worse than that. Melanie was a thorough-going lefty who was ambushed by the reality of what is happening in the UK educational “system”. For this (partial?) recantation of her political beliefs she has been anathemised by her erstwhile friends on the left. Mind you, she is still a relatively frequent (if token politically incorrect) member of the QT panel although her strictures on, among other things, state education and Israel are generally met with either a stunned silence or jeers by the carefully
selectedbalanced audience.If there are any lawyers reading this site could they tell me if it is possible to take the BBC to court on the grounds that they have broken their charter and therefore we cannot be forced to pay.
Also anyone from the newsprint or tv know what happened to noel edmonds and his refusal to pay the tv tax.
This comes from the newsletter of the Space Special Interest group of Mensa, about a year ago.
Surprisingly the most blatantly biased statement by the BBC said that “Anthropogenic Global Warming is a fact” the IPCC using an assumption says “very likely” and the BBC which claims to be impartial says “fact“. This also does not come from the Royal Society. This evidence proves that the BBC takes a more extremely Biased view than the IPCC or the Royal Society and conflicts with the BBC Trusts claim that impartiality is important. This also now leaves open the possibility of legal action against the BBC Trust which has continually refused freedom of information requests for details of how this decision was made by what the BBC calls “the best scientific experts“.
I am told that legal action against the BBC Trust or Roger Harrabin is now possible.
Also, fellows of the Royal Society are up to something.
I await further news, possibly in a future Space Special interest group newsletter.
So The International Broadcasting Trust openly boasts:
‘Our lobbying work has produced significant results. Both the BBC and Channel 4 now have remits which place internationalism at the heart of their output… When the new BBC Charter was first published in 2006 in draft form, there was also no mention of internationalism. As a result of lobbying by IBT the Charter was amended and one of the BBC’s key purposes now is ´to bring the world to the UK.´
Goodness gracious guys and gals, I thought ‘bringing the world to the UK‘ meant stuff like ‘Allo ‘Allo – but ‘Internationalism’, you say?
Now then, now then, what’s that I can hear? My goodness, it’s the new theme tune for the Today programme – The Red Flag if I’m not mistaken….
More here:
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/the-bbc-the-international-broadcasting-trust/
Sooner or later this rats nest of NGOs and single issue pressure groups is going to have to be tackled. Far too much influence – and actual power – is being wielded by people who have simply decided to bypass the tiresome necessity of winning elections. And the BBC is absolutely hand in hand with these anti democratic organisations.
I still think people are having trouble getting their heads around the enormity of what the BBC has done concerning this climate change meeting, and that more than the Savile or McAlpine affairs, it has the potential to send pocket-battleship Beeb to the bottom of the ocean.
In his comment on Guido, the commentator calling himself Dodgy Geezer outlined the most plausible hypothesis explaining the bizarre list of attendees of this meeting , the lack of minutes, the Chatham House rule and the legal fight to keep it clothed in mystery – it was a cheerleaders’ jolly picked almost at random , in retrospect, to provide the supposed occasion of a serious policy meeting taking place, when there hadn’t been any such policy meeting at all.
http://order-order.com/2012/11/13/the-list-of-names-the-bbc-did-not-want-you-to-see-scientist-exposed-by-climategate-set-bbc-policy/#comments
Comments 219 and 262
Later in the thread, the aforementioned Geezer went on to outline how the Corporation really arrived at its ‘science-is-settled’ position:
“The change of policy seems to have started amongst the Environment group – Roger Harrabin, for instance. We have the evidence of the Climategate emails to show that the BBC was routinely talking to the Climate Change Group at UEA, working with them and presenting all their findings in a positive light.
There were some internal complaints when this happened, but they were brushed aside, and the Environment team went on to push the Climate Change into as many other sections of the BBC as possible. Anyone who objected would be classed as a ‘denier’, and edged out of any joint programming. I should imagine that nobody wanted to be smeared like that…”
On the basis of an academic report Guido, in another, later thread, seems to think the scandal is merely that:
“An academic paper containing evidence from previous seminars shows that “specialists” and BBC bosses admitted their editorial stance could be exaggerating the risks of climate change. An anonymous documentary maker explains: “shots might be set up this way, with the member of the public saying I’m suffering (from global warming) even if the causal link cannot be directly drawn”. According to one media specialist, “on account of the weak understanding of science, there are now instances of coverages that exaggerate the risk of climate change… this is unthinkable in spheres such as economics or politics”.
http://order-order.com/2012/11/14/exclusive-what-was-discussed-at-secret-bbc-climate-seminar-coverage-exaggerated-the-risk-of-climate-change/#comments
Boaden spent all that public money just to conceal that? It seems unlikely to me and it’s a pity this misdemeanor is being seen as the story rather than it potentially being a case of gross mendacity followed up by perjury. Perhaps Dodgy Geezer has given up: on the new Guido thread he confines himself to providing a link to sites disproving the hockey stick thesis.
Guido also links to a Specie piece covering exactly the same ground – and also using points made by posters – glad to see we are helping the msm to get their act together at last !
Far from the appearance of a “scientific summit” to decide scientifically if the balance between sceptical and alarmist climate science should be abandoned, based solely on scientific argument, this list of 28 shows something far more sinister, and perhaps illegal.
Most of the 28 and the BBC were all involved in investing large amounts of money (in the case of the government giving large amount of money) to the renewables energy market. the BBC are investing some of their pension funds in the renewables energy market.
This meeting now looks like nothing more than a massive PR coup, insofar as the majority of the people in the room stood to gain massively from investments in a market sector that was underpinned by the (still) contentious and unproven “scientific” hypothesis of anthropological global warming.
Getting the BBC to breach its charter obligations and give the weight if it’s priceless reputation for impartiality, honesty and truth, behind the central hypothesis upon which that sector of the financial markets rests, and by extending the FREE PR across the entire range of BBC programming, gave this market sector unprecedented good publicity.
We now know that the meeting was one of interested parties, and so this looks less and less like a sincere group of scientists engaged in honest brokerage for truth, and more and more like insider dealing and rank corruption of the worst kind.
The police should be informed as to the corrupt nature of that meeting.
It looked to me like a routine ‘cascading’ session, to get everybody to have the right idea (the enthusiasts doing the indoctrinating), sing from the same hymn-sheet and motivate them to do what they can to make further progress, no doubt having first put people in the right mood with a sumptuous buffet.
To have nominated it, after the event, as the serious meeting of climatology experts establishing that the science was settled, simply to fob off annoying bloggers wanting to know how that BBC policy had been arrived at, was a straightforward falsehood.
Misterned said;
Getting the BBC to breach its charter obligations and give the weight if it’s priceless reputation for impartiality, honesty and truth, behind the central hypothesis upon which that sector of the financial markets rests, and by extending the FREE PR across the entire range of BBC programming, gave this market sector unprecedented good publicity.
Well it seems from the pronouncements of the IBT that the BBC didn’t breach their Charter because conveniently they changed it;
As a result of lobbying by IBT the Charter was amended and one of the BBC’s key purposes now is ´to bring the world to the UK.
A further FOI request of the Trust should reveal why the Trust altered the Charter.
We are traveling a road which increasingly becomes really murky. The Trust is there to ensure the BBC behaves itself and is trustworthy and provides honest, balanced reporting. If the Trust is being controlled by the BBC then we have the tail wagging the dog.
If this is the case then we have a situation where the PM is duty bound to advise the Queen that the BBC must have operations suspended and the Trust replaced by an interim board and be thoroughly investigated.
International Broadcasting Trust
Sounds grand doesnt it.
It is in fact run by two leftist lobbyists,
Mark Galloway & Sophie Chalk
I couldn’t find this so called charities 2011 accounts but did find their 2008 accounts which is the last one published on line. 2009 income rose to £175,822 vs £148,594 (2008). You can be sure as income rose so does their salary.
Click to access Ends50%5C0000326150_ac_20081231_e_c.pdf
Some info on the charity
http://opencharities.org/charities/326150
Its also interesting to note that in 2008 only £1833 came from donations and memberships, the rest comes from grants. Where those grants come from is not stated.
Mark certainly knows his way around the system and it seems hes been on the charity roller-coaster since 1982.
I do not agree with the view that the BBC is ‘anti Israel’. The Israeli Palestinian question is a rare area where the BBC does actually seem to be pretty much neutral. I dont think that can be said of Phillips.