Thanks to John Anderson in the comments for bringing this to my attention:

Spiro Theodore Agnew

Television News Coverage

delivered 13 November 1969, Des Moines, Iowa

I think it’s obvious from the cameras here that I didn’t come to discuss the ban on cyclamates or DDT. I have a subject which I think if of great importance to the American people. Tonight I want to discuss the importance of the television news medium to the American people. No nation depends more on the intelligent judgment of its citizens. No medium has a more profound influence over public opinion. Nowhere in our system are there fewer checks on vast power. So, nowhere should there be more conscientious responsibility exercised than by the news media. The question is, “Are we demanding enough of our television news presentations?” “And are the men of this medium demanding enough of themselves?”

Monday night a week ago, President Nixon delivered the most important address of his Administration, one of the most important of our decade. His subject was Vietnam. My hope, as his at that time, was to rally the American people to see the conflict through to a lasting and just peace in the Pacific. For 32 minutes, he reasoned with a nation that has suffered almost a third of a million casualties in the longest war in its history.

When the President completed his address — an address, incidentally, that he spent weeks in the preparation of — his words and policies were subjected to instant analysis and querulous criticism. The audience of 70 million Americans gathered to hear the President of the United States was inherited by a small band of network commentators and self-appointed analysts, the majority of whom expressed in one way or another their hostility to what he had to say.

It was obvious that their minds were made up in advance. Those who recall the fumbling and groping that followed President Johnson’s dramatic disclosure of his intention not to seek another term have seen these men in a genuine state of nonpreparedness. This was not it.

One commentator twice contradicted the President’s statement about the exchange of correspondence with Ho Chi Minh. Another challenged the President’s abilities as a politician. A third asserted that the President was following a Pentagon line. Others, by the expressions on their faces, the tone of their questions, and the sarcasm of their responses, made clear their sharp disapproval.

To guarantee in advance that the President’s plea for national unity would be challenged, one network trotted out Averell Harriman for the occasion. Throughout the President’s address, he waited in the wings. When the President concluded, Mr. Harriman recited perfectly. He attacked the Thieu Government as unrepresentative; he criticized the President’s speech for various deficiencies; he twice issued a call to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to debate Vietnam once again; he stated his belief that the Vietcong or North Vietnamese did not really want military take-over of South Vietnam; and he told a little anecdote about a “very, very responsible” fellow he had met in the North Vietnamese delegation.

All in all, Mr. Harrison offered a broad range of gratuitous advice challenging and contradicting the policies outlined by the President of the United States. Where the President had issued a call for unity, Mr. Harriman was encouraging the country not to listen to him.

A word about Mr. Harriman. For 10 months he was America’s chief negotiator at the Paris peace talks — a period in which the United States swapped some of the greatest military concessions in the history of warfare for an enemy agreement on the shape of the bargaining table. Like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, Mr. Harriman seems to be under some heavy compulsion to justify his failures to anyone who will listen. And the networks have shown themselves willing to give him all the air time he desires.

Now every American has a right to disagree with the President of the United States and to express publicly that disagreement. But the President of the United States has a right to communicate directly with the people who elected him, and the people of this country have the right to make up their own minds and form their own opinions about a Presidential address without having a President’s words and thoughts characterized through the prejudices of hostile critics before they can even be digested.

When Winston Churchill rallied public opinion to stay the course against Hitler’s Germany, he didn’t have to contend with a gaggle of commentators raising doubts about whether he was reading public opinion right, or whether Britain had the stamina to see the war through. When President Kennedy rallied the nation in the Cuban missile crisis, his address to the people was not chewed over by a roundtable of critics who disparaged the course of action he’d asked America to follow.

The purpose of my remarks tonight is to focus your attention on this little group of men who not only enjoy a right of instant rebuttal to every Presidential address, but, more importantly, wield a free hand in selecting, presenting, and interpreting the great issues in our nation. First, let’s define that power.

At least 40 million Americans every night, it’s estimated, watch the network news. Seven million of them view A.B.C., the remainder being divided between N.B.C. and C.B.S. According to Harris polls and other studies, for millions of Americans the networks are the sole source of national and world news. In Will Roger’s observation, what you knew was what you read in the newspaper. Today for growing millions of Americans, it’s what they see and hear on their television sets.

Now how is this network news determined? A small group of men, numbering perhaps no more than a dozen anchormen, commentators, and executive producers, settle upon the 20 minutes or so of film and commentary that’s to reach the public. This selection is made from the 90 to 180 minutes that may be available. Their powers of choice are broad.

They decide what 40 to 50 million Americans will learn of the day’s events in the nation and in the world. We cannot measure this power and influence by the traditional democratic standards, for these men can create national issues overnight. They can make or break by their coverage and commentary a moratorium on the war. They can elevate men from obscurity to national prominence within a week. They can reward some politicians with national exposure and ignore others.

For millions of Americans the network reporter who covers a continuing issue — like the ABM or civil rights — becomes, in effect, the presiding judge in a national trial by jury.

It must be recognized that the networks have made important contributions to the national knowledge — through news, documentaries, and specials. They have often used their power constructively and creatively to awaken the public conscience to critical problems. The networks made hunger and black lung disease national issues overnight. The TV networks have done what no other medium could have done in terms of dramatizing the horrors of war. The networks have tackled our most difficult social problems with a directness and an immediacy that’s the gift of their medium. They focus the nation’s attention on its environmental abuses — on pollution in the Great Lakes and the threatened ecology of the Everglades. But it was also the networks that elevated Stokely Carmichael and George Lincoln Rockwell from obscurity to national prominence.

Nor is their power confined to the substantive. A raised eyebrow, an inflection of the voice, a caustic remark dropped in the middle of a broadcast can raise doubts in a million minds about the veracity of a public official or the wisdom of a Government policy. One Federal Communications Commissioner considers the powers of the networks equal to that of local, state, and Federal Governments all combined. Certainly it represents a concentration of power over American public opinion unknown in history.

Now what do Americans know of the men who wield this power? Of the men who produce and direct the network news, the nation knows practically nothing. Of the commentators, most Americans know little other than that they reflect an urbane and assured presence seemingly well-informed on every important matter. We do know that to a man these commentators and producers live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of Washington, D.C., or New York City, the latter of which James Reston terms the most unrepresentative community in the entire United States.

Both communities bask in their own provincialism, their own parochialism.

We can deduce that these men read the same newspapers. They draw their political and social views from the same sources. Worse, they talk constantly to one another, thereby providing artificial reinforcement to their shared viewpoints. Do they allow their biases to influence the selection and presentation of the news? David Brinkley states objectivity is impossible to normal human behavior. Rather, he says, we should strive for fairness.

Another anchorman on a network news show contends, and I quote: “You can’t expunge all your private convictions just because you sit in a seat like this and a camera starts to stare at you. I think your program has to reflect what your basic feelings are. I’ll plead guilty to that.”

Less than a week before the 1968 election, this same commentator charged that President Nixon’s campaign commitments were no more durable than campaign balloons. He claimed that, were it not for the fear of hostile reaction, Richard Nixon would be giving into, and I quote him exactly, “his natural instinct to smash the enemy with a club or go after him with a meat axe.”

Had this slander been made by one political candidate about another, it would have been dismissed by most commentators as a partisan attack. But this attack emanated from the privileged sanctuary of a network studio and therefore had the apparent dignity of an objective statement. The American people would rightly not tolerate this concentration of power in Government. Is it not fair and relevant to question its concentration in the hands of a tiny, enclosed fraternity of privileged men elected by no one and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by Government?

The views of the majority of this fraternity do not — and I repeat, not — represent the views of America. That is why such a great gulf existed between how the nation received the President’s address and how the networks reviewed it. Not only did the country receive the President’s speech more warmly than the networks, but so also did the Congress of the United States.

Yesterday, the President was notified that 300 individual Congressmen and 50 Senators of both parties had endorsed his efforts for peace. As with other American institutions, perhaps it is time that the networks were made more responsive to the views of the nation and more responsible to the people they serve.

Now I want to make myself perfectly clear. I’m not asking for Government censorship or any other kind of censorship. I am asking whether a form of censorship already exists when the news that 40 million Americans receive each night is determined by a handful of men responsible only to their corporate employers and is filtered through a handful of commentators who admit to their own set of biases.

The question I’m raising here tonight should have been raised by others long ago. They should have been raised by those Americans who have traditionally considered the preservation of freedom of speech and freedom of the press their special provinces of responsibility. They should have been raised by those Americans who share the view of the late Justice Learned Hand that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues than through any kind of authoritative selection. Advocates for the networks have claimed a First Amendment right to the same unlimited freedoms held by the great newspapers of America.

But the situations are not identical. Where The New York Times reaches 800,000 people, N.B.C. reaches 20 times that number on its evening news. [The average weekday circulation of the Times in October was 1,012,367; the average Sunday circulation was 1,523,558.] Nor can the tremendous impact of seeing television film and hearing commentary be compared with reading the printed page.

A decade ago, before the network news acquired such dominance over public opinion, Walter Lippman spoke to the issue. He said there’s an essential and radical difference between television and printing. The three or four competing television stations control virtually all that can be received over the air by ordinary television sets. But besides the mass circulation dailies, there are weeklies, monthlies, out-of-town newspapers and books. If a man doesn’t like his newspaper, he can read another from out of town or wait for a weekly news magazine. It’s not ideal, but it’s infinitely better than the situation in television.

There, if a man doesn’t like what the networks are showing, all he can do is turn them off and listen to a phonograph. “Networks,” he stated “which are few in number have a virtual monopoly of a whole media of communications.” The newspaper of mass circulation have no monopoly on the medium of print.

Now a virtual monopoly of a whole medium of communication is not something that democratic people should blindly ignore. And we are not going to cut off our television sets and listen to the phonograph just because the airways belong to the networks. They don’t. They belong to the people. As Justice Byron wrote in his landmark opinion six months ago, “It’s the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.”

Now it’s argued that this power presents no danger in the hands of those who have used it responsibly. But as to whether or not the networks have abused the power they enjoy, let us call as our first witness, former Vice President Humphrey and the city of Chicago. According to Theodore White, television’s intercutting of the film from the streets of Chicago with the “current proceedings on the floor of the convention created the most striking and false political picture of 1968 — the nomination of a man for the American Presidency by the brutality and violence of merciless police.”

If we are to believe a recent report of the House of Representative Commerce Committee, then television’s presentation of the violence in the streets worked an injustice on the reputation of the Chicago police. According to the committee findings, one network in particular presented, and I quote, “a one-sided picture which in large measure exonerates the demonstrators and protestors.” Film of provocations of police that was available never saw the light of day, while the film of a police response which the protestors provoked was shown to millions.

Another network showed virtually the same scene of violence from three separate angles without making clear it was the same scene. And, while the full report is reticent in drawing conclusions, it is not a document to inspire confidence in the fairness of the network news. Our knowledge of the impact of network news on the national mind is far from complete, but some early returns are available. Again, we have enough information to raise serious questions about its effect on a democratic society.

Several years ago Fred Friendly, one of the pioneers of network news, wrote that its missing ingredients were conviction, controversy, and a point of view. The networks have compensated with a vengeance.

And in the networks’ endless pursuit of controversy, we should ask: What is the end value — to enlighten or to profit? What is the end result — to inform or to confuse? How does the ongoing exploration for more action, more excitement, more drama serve our national search for internal peace and stability?

Gresham’s Law seems to be operating in the network news. Bad news drives out good news. The irrational is more controversial than the rational. Concurrence can no longer compete with dissent. One minute of Eldrige Cleaver is worth 10 minutes of Roy Wilkins. The labor crisis settled at the negotiating table is nothing compared to the confrontation that results in a strike — or better yet, violence along the picket lines. Normality has become the nemesis of the network news.

Now the upshot of all this controversy is that a narrow and distorted picture of America often emerges from the televised news. A single, dramatic piece of the mosaic becomes in the minds of millions the entire picture. The American who relies upon television for his news might conclude that the majority of American students are embittered radicals; that the majority of black Americans feel no regard for their country; that violence and lawlessness are the rule rather than the exception on the American campus.

We know that none of these conclusions is true.

Perhaps the place to start looking for a credibility gap is not in the offices of the Government in Washington but in the studios of the networks in New York! Television may have destroyed the old stereotypes, but has it not created new ones in their places? What has this “passionate” pursuit of controversy done to the politics of progress through logical compromise essential to the functioning of a democratic society?

The members of Congress or the Senate who follow their principles and philosophy quietly in a spirit of compromise are unknown to many Americans, while the loudest and most extreme dissenters on every issue are known to every man in the street. How many marches and demonstrations would we have if the marchers did not know that the ever-faithful TV cameras would be there to record their antics for the next news show?

We’ve heard demands that Senators and Congressmen and judges make known all their financial connections so that the public will know who and what influences their decisions and their votes. Strong arguments can be made for that view. But when a single commentator or producer, night after night, determines for millions of people how much of each side of a great issue they are going to see and hear, should he not first disclose his personal views on the issue as well?

In this search for excitement and controversy, has more than equal time gone to the minority of Americans who specialize in attacking the United States — its institutions and its citizens?

Tonight I’ve raised questions. I’ve made no attempt to suggest the answers. The answers must come from the media men. They are challenged to turn their critical powers on themselves, to direct their energy, their talent, and their conviction toward improving the quality and objectivity of news presentation. They are challenged to structure their own civic ethics to relate to the great responsibilities they hold.

And the people of America are challenged, too — challenged to press for responsible news presentation. The people can let the networks know that they want their news straight and objective. The people can register their complaints on bias through mail to the networks and phone calls to local stations. This is one case where the people must defend themselves, where the citizen, not the Government, must be the reformer; where the consumer can be the most effective crusader.

By way of conclusion, let me say that every elected leader in the United States depends on these men of the media. Whether what I’ve said to you tonight will be heard and seen at all by the nation is not my decision, it’s not your decision, it’s their decision. In tomorrow’s edition of the Des Moines Register, you’ll be able to read a news story detailing what I’ve said tonight. Editorial comment will be reserved for the editorial page, where it belongs. Should not the same wall of separation exist between news and comment on the nation’s networks?

Now, my friends, we’d never trust such power, as I’ve described, over public opinion in the hands of an elected Government. It’s time we questioned it in the hands of a small unelected elite. The great networks have dominated America’s airwaves for decades. The people are entitled a full accounting their stewardship.

From the Telegraph…I can add no more…..

The BBC’s man of the people

The journalist Paul Mason is dead chuffed by a nice review of his book Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere, a study of the Occupy movements, by the American historian Paul Le Blanc.

“This challenging ‘must-read’ volume is a journalistic account with a difference, informed as it is by radical and revolutionary social theory (most obviously, through not exclusively, Karl Marx),” writes Le Blanc.

Le Blanc is a hard-Left scholar who campaigns against “the dismissive or trash-and-bash attitude towards Lenin”. He disagrees with aspects of Mason’s analysis, but his review – in Links: the International Journal of Socialist Renewal – makes clear that the two men are on the same side of the workers’ struggle.

You may be wondering: can this Paul Mason be the same man who is paid from the BBC licence fee to offer rigorously impartial commentary in his job as Newsnight’s economics editor? The answer is yes.

Easton is back on form after having dabbled with a bit of Conservatism.

‘The empty seats scandal at these Olympics refuses to go away. The problem is not simply that each vacant place is a kick in the teeth to the millions of sports fans who have tried desperately to get hold of tickets.

The blocks of empty seating are also a reminder of the privileges available for the rich and powerful at these Games. It looks dreadful because each unused spot emphasises the special treatment afforded to officials and their business partners who then don’t turn up.’

This from a BBC that is vastly out of touch with the general public on just about every major social or economic theme from Europe, immigration, economic policy to Islam and fighting terrorism.

The BBC also seems out of touch with reality at the Olympics:

‘The main stadium, built at vast cost, generated unprecedented fervour for an opening session. Normally, track and field starts in arenas about two thirds full. Only for the evening programmes is the fire really lit. Yesterday’s marvellous turnout stunned the athletics community. The roars for Ennis could be heard across the Olympic Park.’

Empty seats?  Not a major ‘scandal’…just an admin cock up rather than a symptom of Capitalist greed and arrogance and lack of care for the ‘small people’.

Perhaps they all had jobs to go to…or didn’t actually want to go to the Olympics….is it compulsory now?

Easton  is indulging in socialist propaganda pure and simple…he hasn’t got a clue as to why any of the guests didn’t turn up but abuses them anyway marking them out to be some sort of Class criminals for having money and ‘privilege’.

No chance of course that BBC employees ever give up the opportunity of a free junket…Glastonbury, football World Cups, Wimbledon and the Olympics…they’re there enjoying themselves immensely…..and in such huge numbers.

This is just another cheap shot at big business and capitalism by the BBC who seem on an all out assault against the mechanisms that fund the schools, the hospitals, the welfare payments, the wages of the BBC parasites.

Here’s a couple of other recent examples which both seek to undermine the Establishment and promote ‘People Power’ and rebellion of one sort or another as well as casting a jaundiced eye over capitalism:

King John and the Leveson Inquiry

Jonathan Freedland presents the programme which looks at the past behind the present.
This week he centres on the Leveson Inquiry and the parallels it has with the 1215 King John Inquiry in which both the King and prime minister are forced to set up and inquiry against their wishes.

(Note no mention of Labour other than to praise Miliband)

Helena Kennedy QC presents a new series uncovering the profound and powerful relationship between our financial and legal systems, between capitalism and the law, between freedom and justice.

 She tells us that the Law has been used to preserve vested interests (capitalists) and that those with most power are not easily visible and also that government is paralysed by big corporations and banks but we have an alternative way of doing politics…as shown most prominently by Occupy.

What a surprise…the BBC supporting mob rule and the power of violence over democracy and representative government.

Even programmes about restoring old houses are recruited to the Marxist cause:

‘The Elms, an early Georgian house, for generations has been slipping slowly into a state of ruin.  For 8 years it has been standing empty as a string of developers have tried to exploit it, but as a grade 2 listed building they weren’t allowed to do cheap and cheerful conversions…so the Elms would never be saved for just hard profit…it needed someone who wasn’t out to make a fast buck.’

Curious mindset from the BBC….happy to import millions of cheap foreign workers so that capitalism can thrive (or so the BBC likes to say) but doesn’t want to let them have anywhere to live if it means those greedy capitalist developers turn an absolute ruin into nice, modern flats at affordable rents.

BBC does talk out of its backside most of the time….a newspaper story recently said we are refusing to grow up and that ‘adulthood’ and maturity arrives in our 30’s now…..that’d be about right for the BBC…a bunch of eternal students still fighting ‘The Man’.

‘The BBC’s expansion plans sound like a bid for global media domination.

Media companies and advertisers are right to complain that an overfunded BBC represents a serious market distortion. It threatens to stifle competition and innovation because, feather-bedded by the licence, Auntie can always wield a fatter cheque book than its rivals.’

But hey, let’s not talk about the BBC….let’s talk about those nasty big commercial companies ruining it for everyone…….

The bankrupt Guardian is trying to buy itself some time by selling off its local radio network to Global Radio….it seems that there are no friends in Media as the Guardian’s close friend and ally, the BBC, sticks the knife in.

Today (3rd August) Jeremy Hunt announces that he will investigate the deal…..

‘The Office of Fair Trading had already been looking into the deal, which was finalised at the end of June for an estimated £50m to £70m. Global had hoped it would be fast-tracked to the Competition Commission.

However, Hunt’s intervention means he will now make the decision as to whether to send it to the commission.

Hunt said: “On the basis of the information available to me, I have decided that under all the circumstances and, in particular the concentration of ownership which will occur in some parts of the UK, the merger may be relevant to the issue of plurality, particularly in those areas… I am therefore asking Ofcom to prepare a report advising me in greater detail about plurality.

Global’s rivals claim the enlarged Global Radio would have a dominant share of commercial radio listening in Glasgow, Birmingham, Cardiff and Manchester.

Ofcom will consider content types, audiences, media platforms, control of media enterprises and future developments in the media landscape.’

Just who could be those rivals?

Oh look….the Today programme on the 31st of July brings us all the news about the sell off….

John Humphrys: ‘You will be left with big commercial groups (leaving the BBC aside) controlling everything….what would be the consequences for quality and diversity?’

Answer: ‘Well you could hardly call it good news.’

Note that ‘Leaving the BBC aside’….how can you possibly sideline the BBC in a discussion about media domination by massive corporations?

I wonder how much pressure the BBC put onto Hunt to investigate this….and just how much he felt ‘obliged’ to do the BBC a favour after the Leveson inquiry and his willingness to approve the BSkyB takeover?

Curious that the BBC should be so concerned about what its commercial ‘rivals’ get up to considering the BBC’s income hardly depends upon it competing for viewers and advertising revenue (In radio, for example, the BBC already shells out nearly as much as the commercial sector’s total revenues.).

The BBC is the dominant player in the UK in all media areas, even in print it out muscles many publishers of magazines (With sales of about 100m a year, the magazine division is the third largest publisher in the UK.) and on the internet (The Newspaper Society says the BBC is being anti-competitive in that a huge corporation is stifling attempts by local media to get a foothold on the internet.)　

The BBC has 55% of all radio listeners….and despite its insistence that Local radio is on its last legs there seems to be plenty of life in it yet, especially in London….it is clear that the BBC is a major block on commercial radios growth and ability to just survive….which is possibly why it needs to merge into bigger groups to compete with the BBC (though BBC journalists beg to differ…. ‘Even where the BBC is seen as competing directly with its commercial rivals, it is doing so by occupying a different space. A space that is very clearly seen as a Public Service Broadcasting space, against competitors who are very much occupying a commercial space. This is widely understood by the public that the BBC serves. ):

‘Radio audience figures released by Rajar in February showed that BBC radio stations, including its local stations, had a 55% listening share.

Although the London market continues to be fiercely competitive the agency buyers were not concerned any increases or decreases reflected any particular trend at the stations, which will be good news for Magic and Smooth.

Elsewhere, the growth of BBC Radio 2 is highlighted as a worry for commercial radio.

“A slight worry for commercial radio fans is that BBC Radio 2 have achieved impressive growth by increasing its year on year share of total listening hours from 14.9% to 16.1% and this station is undoubtedly the main barrier preventing commercial radio’s strive for greater share of listening.

“What is clear is Absolute is starting to see the benefit of years of major investment in programming, talent and with the additional digital stations (60s through 00s) they will certainly be one to watch in the coming years.

“In London, 95.8 Capital FM steals the crown in reach and at breakfast. However, Heart can claim number one based on share. In truth, London remains as competitive as ever, as the top four (Kiss, Magic, Heart and Capital) continue to leapfrog one another each quarter.’

There has been a lot of concern about the power and dominance of the BBC in recent years, though not much has been done about it:

Labour’s Ben Bradshaw said this when they were in power:

“The BBC with eight linear TV channels, several interactive and high definition channels, nine national radio stations and a dominant local radio network, the iPlayer, a world-leading online presence, and a commercial publishing, dvd , television and multi-media empire of some scale.

And if it were to continue on anything like that trajectory, the rest of the industry would be right to be worried and the mixed economy would be seriously imbalanced.”

Andrew Marr, BBC journalist, said this “we have become too powerful, too much the interpreters, using our talents as communicators to crowd them (politicians) out. On paper we mock them more than ever before and report them less than ever before. On television and radio, we commentators are edging them out ever more carelessly”.

John Lloyd said “You have to ask the question: is it the purpose of the news media to make an impact or to report the news?”.

David Cameron, said: “We’ve all seen in our own constituencies small internet businesses, often involved in education or other information provision, working away to create a market, to make some money, and then the BBC comes along and squish, like a big foot on an ant, and that business goes out. And I think that we need to look at ways of actually making sure that the BBC doesn’t over-extend itself.”

He said there needed to be a “a better set of rules that stops the BBC from charging in . . . and actually putting other people who are struggling to provide a market, out of work.”

Emma Duncan, deputy editor of the Economist, highlighted the specific threat that the BBC’s online news service poses to newspapers: “The Corporation has a fantastic website. That’s hardly surprising since it spends £145m a year of licence-fee payers’ money on it. Britain’s national newspapers put together spend around £100m on their online efforts. If the BBC is allowed to go on dominating online news it will undermine other news providers’ ability to survive on the internet, and thus threaten the diversity of news sources that is crucial to a democracy

An all-powerful BBC bestriding the media plains? It was never supposed to be like this.
The row clearly demonstrated how much power has accrued to the BBC in some unexpected ways. As respect for other national institutions (politics, church, traditional family hierarchies) recedes, the BBC has assumed more cultural influence. It has become the place where national debates about moral, political and ethical disputes are increasingly being aired.

Globe-trotting Auntie alarms rivals
(Filed: 31/03/2006)

BBC’s ‘aggressive pursuit of profit’ is fuelling fears of unfair competition, writes Russell Hotten

The BBC’s expansion plans sound like a bid for global media domination. There will be an “aggressive” pursuit of profit, said BBC executive John Smith, as he talked this week of proposals for children’s programmes in the US, satellite TV in India and a new global website.

You could feel the blood boiling in the offices of the Beeb’s commercial rivals. And just to rub their noses in it, Smith said BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s money-making arm, was on course to exceed its profits target.
At the root of opposition to the BBC’s commercial activities is that it is not compatible with the corporation’s public service broadcasting remit.’

That’s a fairly conclusive and comprehensive critical judgement of the BBC and its overarching power over social and political life in Britain…as well as over the commercial media sector.

The BBC has become too big and too powerful, completely unaccountable and arrogant about that power, safe in the knowledge that politicians are too afraid to really attempt a radical overhaul to pull the teeth of the many headed monster that the BBC has become.

And as for quality what has the BBC ever done for you?

It does have some exellent programmes on radio and television….but look through the offerings on the iPlayer and you soon realise that there is little new, original, stimulating or innovative tumbling off the BBC production line.

In fact it all too often lowers the tone…even John Humphrys admits it:

They say Murdoch has coarsened Britain but Humphrys says TV is just as bad:

‘The good television of today is better than the best television of the old days. The bad television is worse. It is not only bad, it is damaging. Meretricious. Seedy. Cynical.

Good television does not balance the bad. Not if it coarsens and brutalises and turns us into voyeurs. The good cannot pay the dues of the bad when the bad is indefensible. And some of our worst television is indefensible. It does harm.

I was shocked by some of what I saw when I came out of my Rip Van Winkle state. So much of it seemed not just vulgar and obsessed with sex, but altogether more confrontational than I’d remembered. The violence of the language surprised me. It seemed almost impossible to switch on without encountering some sort of aggression, even in the soaps.
what of that other vital aspect of public service broadcasting: news – the most important thing we do. By a mile. If we get it wrong, we forfeit the right to exist.

It was Greg Dyke’s view that we hadn’t faced up to the fact that politics is boring and it’s our job to make it less boring.

Even if it were true, it’s not our job to make it fun. It’s a serious business and it’s our job to report it seriously. We shouldn’t be trying to lure people into politics by pretending that it’s just another game show. Greg got it wrong.
But there’s a more serious charge: that our own cynical approach has turned people off politics. This is the thesis of John Lloyd’s book, What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics.

The question is not whether there is cynicism about politics, but whether journalism is the cause.

But I don’t believe it. For one thing, don’t politicians have some responsibility for it? What about the so-called Tory sleaze and the way Labour made capital from it? Or the war many believe (rightly or wrongly) they were misled into supporting?
We should not be fearful of standing up to those in power. That is our job: to be fearless in the face of power. In any era.

We need more, not less, in-depth interviewing of politicians. The idea that tough questions prevent politicians from giving answers, and gentle chats seduce them into candour is, frankly, risible. We need more, not less, investigative journalism. We need much more straightforward political analysis. Public service broadcasting can and must make an important contribution to the democratic process. It can do so only if not cowed by those in power.’

Ed Balls has a Plan, one which he has had for a long time.  Long enough you might think to actually have worked out whether it will actually produce the economic uplift that he claims it will.  Unfortunately Ed Balls hasn’t bothered to go as far as checking his figures…or rather his hopeful predictions, and with the help of the BBC and a lot of brass neck, is managing to maintain the impression that he does have the faintest idea of what he is talking about and it is not all a lot of pie in the sky make believe that he hopes will fool the voters long enough for him to get his foot in the door of Number 11 before they rumble him.

Despite a few valiant efforts at unearthing the truth the BBC is running cover for Balls and by doing so is endangering the economic recovery with constant negative reporting and gloomy outlooks undermining both public and business confidence thereby limiting borrowing and investment and future growth.

Before 9/11 the US intelligence services had a constant stream of information that if gathered together, collated and analysed would have probably allowed the intelligence services to predict the attacks and then to prevent them….but with so many different agencies with different agendas the information was not fused to produce a coherent  single narrative allowing them to produce a clear indication of what the intelligence all meant.  Individual people or groups knew certain facts but when it came to produce an overall intelligence picture those individual intelligence resources got lost or were ignored in favour of what was probably the conventional wisdom about what was happening.

A similar situation exists within the BBC…except that it is left to the Public to make sense of the diffuse pieces of information sent their way by the BBC.  The BBC itself fails to join up the dots, either deliberately or through lack of a central controlling policy to guide the thrust of any particular story which has the effect of allowing a culture to develop that is based upon the consensus opinion amongst the dominant staff  which means that other staff have to toe the line and adopt the same attitudes or lose out on promotion or the most favourable work….as Chomsky says:  ‘Most people are not liars, there are outright liars and brazen propagandists in journalism and in the academic professions but the norm is obedience to the culture, adoption of uncritical attitudes, taking the easy path of self-deception.  There is also a selective process in the academic professions and journalism…people who are independent-minded and cannot be trusted to be obedient don’t make it by and large.  They are filtered out along the way leaving you with a monoculture of similar thinking, attitudes and world views.’

 All this means of course is that however the consensus is reached once it has been decided upon, however ‘unofficially’, there is little or no dissent from it regardless of the facts.

The BBC keeps to the Party line until there is a signal from a higher authority that all has changed…in which case a new consensus is reached and it all begins again….genuine news based upon investigation, reason and truth seeking is shelved in favour of partisan promotion of the chosen ideology or thinking.

 For instance Ed Balls’ ‘Plan B’.

 If you wanted to find out about the credibility of Ed Balls’ ‘Plan B’ the BBC is not the place to go if you want an intelligent and impartial analysis….for the BBC the economic outlook is always dire and unlikely to improve unless Osborne changes direction….and Britain exists inside a bubble isolated from the effects of world, and especially European, events, and America is swiftly recovering its economic health under the sainted Obama’s divine guidance and massive government spending.

There does seem to be a single narrative in the BBC editorial that pushes Balls’ plan….but every now and again you get a dissenting voice of reason that tells it like it really is about the economy and the solutions to the problems…if you conduct a wide ranging scrutiny of BBC output you will find a steady stream of common sense and economic reality bubbling to the surface from even the most unlikely sources long suppressed by the consensus.

You will even hear the likes of Stephanie Flanders and Robert Peston say something that completely rubbishes Balls’ plan…but ever after they ignore that moment of clarity and revert to the BBC conventional wisdom that Osborne is failing and we need the infamous Plan B.

 It is readily evident that Balls’ plan would fail…history, the IMF, the Markets and common sense say it will.

 Only the BBC say it will succeed.

 Balls is a clever man, he went to Oxford and Harvard….he studied economics, philosophy and politics….not an inspiring mixture to be sure….not a single subject that demands a single answer….complimenting each other only in so much as they all allow you to say something supposedly intelligent without actually committing yourself to anything concrete that could be held against you in the future.

 Here are some words of advice that should be in the front of every economics text book: 

‘It is the skilled economist who looks for the effects that are hidden, the surprises that are unseen.’

 The Seen and the Unseen

“There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.

“Yet this difference is tremendous; for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous, and vice versa. “

– From an essay by Frédéric Bastiat in 1850, “That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen”

Ed Balls amuses himself by playing politics instead of adopting a statesmanlike approach to the massive problems Labour left us and working to solve the problems.  he opts for the instant effect, the flash in the pan, that impresses for an instant but is soon gone rather than workig for a long term solution that involves hard work and initial economic pain.

He could agree that Osborne is right…but then he’d have to admit Labour broke the economy and robbed at least one generation of a prosperous future whilst reducing others to a poverty ridden retirement.

 Instead he offers us a 5 point plan that  not even the Labour Party wants as policy and school boy antics in Parliament that reduces the State Legislature to the level of playground delinquency and foolishness.

 And yet the BBC take him seriously.

 You have to wonder why….as said his 5 point plan is not Labour policy as even the BBC admits: 

 ‘If you thought you heard Ed Balls promise to cut VAT on home improvements or bring forward investment projects in his conference speech, listen again.

He did nothing of the sort.  Those were not Labour policies.’

 What else did he reveal in that speech?:  “No matter how much we dislike particular Tory spending cuts or tax rises, we cannot make promises now to reverse them.”

 So his plan is not Labour policy and in fact he might continue with the Coalition economic policies…just as Brown did after 1997 following the Tory policies that turned the deficit into a surplus…until Brown returned to his roots and the ruinous tax and spend policies that have beggared us all.

 And yet the BBC still push his Plan B stimulus. 

The BBC’s very own Dominic Laurie has tried for a year and a half to get Balls to produce the figures that will show his plan will work…Balls has consistently refused as here in a Channel 4 interview:

‘Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls has told Channel 4 News Britain needs a “stimulus for growth” saying that he has a “better way” of getting the economy back on track….

“The economy has flatlined…..What I’ve not done is sat down and done a detailed economic forecast – that’s actually for the independent OBR.

 “What I’ve said is five things the government could do which could have a material impact on growth, jobs and get our deficit down.”

 His five-point growth plan includes:

1.  Repeating the bank bonus tax – and using “the money to build 25,000 affordable homes and guarantee a job for 100,000 young people”

2.  Bringing forward long-term investment projects, such as schools, roads and transport, to create jobs

3.  Reversing January’s “damaging” VAT rise now for a temporary period

4.  Immediate one-year cut in VAT to 5% on home improvements, repairs and maintenance

5.  One-year national insurance tax break “for every small firm which takes on extra workers, using the money left over from the government’s failed national insurance rebate for new businesses”

Say that again Ed….what haven’t you done?

 ‘What I’ve not done is sat down and done a detailed economic forecast.’

 Balls hasn’t actually crunched the numbers for his Plan B?  It is astonishing that the shadow chancellor can, for nearly two years,  be allowed to get away with incanting his ridiculous 5 points without a real challenge and a demand for his workings….a man who states he has a ‘better way to save the country’…but he’s not actually going to show you how that ‘s going to work is a charlatan….a carpet bagger, a snake oil salesman, and should be shown the door and run out of town.

 And yet the BBC take him seriously.

 Conservative Home have managed to come up with some figures, and it’s no wonder Balls isn’t too keen to be more candid about them:

Balls’ Plan B would… “Increase the deficit by £87 billion per year by 2015 compared to the Government’s plans; Increase the National Debt by £5,000 for every man, woman and child in Britain; Increase debt interest payments by £16 billion per year – or £500 for every taxpayer; and Only reduce the deficit by a third over four years – not halve it over four years as Ed Balls has promised.”

Flanders resurrected her ‘Stuff’n’Nonsense’  programmes to examine firstly what we should do to encourage growth in the economy.  She valiantly persisted throughout fighting for Balls’ Plan B but was pretty well outgunned by all three guests, even those who might have been expected to support her, sorry, Balls’ position.

 Even she seems to realise that the game is up stating:

‘The debate was lively, and I think we did get past some of the tired old arguments about “austerity versus growth”.  So it was a realistic debate – no magic bullets on offer, I’m afraid.’ 

What did come out of the programme was that it was private investment not government debt sourced stimulus that helped the economy recover, and that the essential ingredient is ‘confidence’ of both consumers and business. 

One final contribution was to state that: Politicians have to be honest…the economy cannot be fixed NOW, you can’t have everything immediately, there are costs as well as benefits to economic policies….short term ones might seem attractive to a politician seeking votes but it is the long term ones that, whilst initially painful, generate the best, longer lasting outcomes eventually.

 Her second programme was somewhat dull but came to a conclusion that we are better off without a European Union. 

Her third was an ‘Occupy’ special questioning not only the need for growth but for any sort of wealth at all…quality of life versus money apparently….which is at odds with the BBC’s own attitude that growth is essential…and that vast immigration is also essential to provide that growth…essentially importing the ‘Coolies’ of George Orwell to provide the cheap labour which slaves away for the wealthy in the UK…..which is at odds with that other BBC attitude that consumerism and capitalism are evils that should be abolished to make way for Soviet style tractor factories, empty shelves and bread queues.

Robert Peston also lets slip the truth occasionally although we never hear reference to this type of thinking normally as it seems to be suppressed in favour of  the Labour narrative:

The Party’s Over.

It has now become widely recognised that perhaps the greatest economic policy failure in the UK, US and eurozone during the 16 boom years before the crash of 2008 was the explosion of borrowing by banks, households, businesses and governments – or, to use the jargon, the unprecedented and massive leveraging up of entire economies. 

That is why getting the debt down to prudent levels is the most important economic challenge of our time. 

So what’s going on? Why are UK debts still going up?

Well partly it’s to do with a phenomenon I’ve discussed here many times, that debt has been shuffled from the private sector to the public sector.

When banks stopped lending, and private-sector spending and investing collapsed, governments continued to spend, even though tax revenues were falling. So public-sector borrowing exploded.

To be clear, if governments had not continued to spend, our recession might well have become something much worse, a 1930s-style depression.

But it is fair to say that a consequence of banks, households and businesses trying to repay their debts has been a big increase in government borrowing.

The point is that if excessive debt is the disease, what we’ve had since the end of 2008 is analgesic and sticking plaster, rather than cure.

Record low interest rates and the creation of £275bn of new money through the quantitative easing programme have made it possible for us to live with our debts – cheap money has made the debts bearable.

But we haven’t as yet found a way to get the debts down so that we can be confident that our economy’s foundations are solid and sound again.

What it means is that we must brace ourselves for many years of relatively low growth, perhaps 1% versus the 3% of the 16 boom years before the crash, because we no longer have the fuel of borrowing more and more every year.’

And let’s not forget this long forgotten gem from Flanders who knows where the blame really lay for the economic downturn…but has conveniently forgotten since:

Testing the Miracle

Stephanie Flanders, BBC economics reporter

On running the rule over Gordon Brown’s economic record 2005

Finally we have this blasphemy that has managed to slip through the BBC’s  Keyne eyed filter:

 ‘What would John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential economists of the 20th Century, have made of the current economic situation, ponders philosopher John Gray.

 In other respects, Keynes’s early philosophy was dangerously shallow. “We were among the last of the Utopians, or meliorists as they are sometimes called”, he wrote, “who believe in a continuing moral progress by virtue of which the human race already consists of reliable, rational, decent people, influenced by truth and objective standards… We were not aware that civilisation was a thin and precarious crust… only maintained by rules and conventions skilfully put across and guilefully preserved.” 

We face a conjunction of three large events – the implosion of the debt-based finance-capitalism that developed over the past twenty years or so, a fracturing of the euro resulting from fatal faults in its design, and the ongoing shift of economic power from the west to the fast-developing countries of the east and south.

Interacting with each other, these crises have created a global crisis that old-fashioned Keynesian policies cannot deal with. Yet it’s still Keynes from whom we have most to learn. Not Keynes the economic engineer, who is invoked by his disciples today. But Keynes the sceptic, who understood that markets are as prone to fits of madness as any other human institution and who tried to envisage a more intelligent variety of capitalism.

Keynes condemnedBritain’s return in 1925 to the gold standard, which famously he described as a barbarous relic. Would he not also condemn the determination of European governments to save the euro?

I suspect Keynes would be just as sceptical about the prospect of returning to growth. With our ageing populations and overhang of debt, there’s little prospect of developed societies keeping up with the rapid expansion that is going on in emerging countries.

Keynes’s most important lesson is to let go of inherited ideas. If we cling to the panaceas of earlier times, we risk losing the civilisation we have inherited. This is the truly Keynesian insight that our leaders – airily floating above the dangerous undercurrents of popular feeling like the water-spiders ofBloomsbury- have yet to grasp.’

A classic example of the BBC editing out voices that do not parrot the desired narrative….in this report the BBC give the floor to a disabled charity, Scope, to make claims which are completely unsubstantiated by any objective standards, and whilst in a very early morning radio report we heard a dissenting voice, that voice has been noticeable by its absence from any other reports as have any other people challenging Scope’s claims.

‘Many disabled people in Britain feel media coverage about benefit cheats has negatively affected attitudes towards them, a survey suggests.

Almost half of the 500 disabled people and carers polled for charity Scope said attitudes to them had worsened.

It comes after ministers released data suggesting 55% of sickness benefit claimants were no longer eligible for it.’

This is 5Live’s early report  (17 mins 40 secs) from ‘Morning Reports’ in which Ellis Cashmore, Professor of culture, media and sport at Staffordshire University pours cold water on the central claim.

He states that the survey result merely reveals disabled people’s thoughts about other people’s attitudes towards them… their own feelings with no objectivity.

He says that claiming media coverage of ‘disabled’ fraudsters makes people more distrusting and abusive towards disabled people is to make a dodgy link between the Media and their coverage of fraudsters…it is a leap of faith…. there is nothing in the research to make the link.

I would say that is pretty clear from him……the ‘survey’ isn’t based on any objective research and purely reproduces disabled people’s own feelings and perceptions about what they think other people are thinking rather than investigating whether there really has been an increase in negative impressions of genuinely disabled people.

Prof. Cashmore’s comments have not been repeated….the only side to this story we hear is Scope’s.

I might suggest, purely based my own subjective feeling, that the BBC are happy to give Scope free rein and publicise its claims because firstly, they amount to an attack on the government and its policies, so happy days there, and secondly, are intended to keep the welfare gravy train running by forcing the government to back down on its welfare rationalizations.

Once again the BBC is interfering in the politics of government and are aiding and abetting pressure groups in their own vested interests, i.e. shilling the government out of as much money as possible by making claims that are intended to pull at heart strings and generate guilt.

Any rational or objective analysis of the situation is unwelcome as it would detract from the response to the emotional blackmail that this ‘survey’ is designed to elicit….therefore no dissent is brooked.

Mardell strikes again raining on Romney’s parade in Israel…far from just reporting he adds into the mix a few of his own moralising comments which seem based more on a partiality towards Palestinians  than a desire to reveal any truths.

‘Mr Romney was talking about what he called “the dramatically stark difference in economic vitality” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. He said that in Israel, the gross domestic product was $21,000 per capita compared to $10,000 in the Palestinian territories.

He said, says if you can learn anything it is that “culture makes all the difference”.

And when he looked at the accomplishments of the people of Israel he recognised the power of culture and a few other things.

It does seem at least odd that Mr Romney did not also reflect on the “few other things” that might have an impact on economic dynamism.

This is not to suggest that he should shy away from the argument in general, which is an interesting one.

But many would argue the recent history of the Palestinians has had a bigger impact on their economic prospects than anything else.’

Indeed….but whose fault is that?  Who has attacked the Israelis day in day out for over 60 years?…the Palestinians and other Muslims.

Had the Palestinians not gone on the warpath they would have undoubtedly had a far more successful economy, a thriving society and a good future.  Instead they chose to fight a war.

It’s about time the BBC recognised a few truths and admitted Israel is under constant attack from Muslims who wish to destroy Israel and the Jews….they are not interested in a two state solution…they want it all.

When the BBC start broadcasting such truths perhaps we will have fewer people mindlessly supporting the ‘Palestinian cause’….which is one of ethnic cleansing and annihilation of the Jews.

A cause the BBC seems to support with every report that rushes to condemn Israel at every move.

One of ‘those other things’ perhaps? ……BBC News kills Jews.

And it’s interesting o see their moderation policy in work…just what offends their policy?

256. Zap Pow We have seen the damage caused by America to the rest of the world, Romney is a crooked liability, if it wasn’t for GOP wars for OIL and GOP financial crises the world would have progressed

265. Britainsnotpleased Just now  Israel with the backing of the USA is wiping the Palestinians off the planet,

239.FarAway  18 Minutes ago     Another Racist Uneducated Religious Fanatic

259.indian mathematician
2 Minutes ago    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

“I do not see the results of Muller et al as being scientifically important.  However, their result may be politically important.”   Ken Caldeira, AGW advocate

No other word can describe this article, presumably by Richard Black as it bears his inimitable style of half truths and missing information, other than FRAUD.

This is a deliberate attempt to mislead the readers and induce them into swallowing the man made global warming scam using the device of a fake conversion to the cause combined with dodgy, unproven ‘science’ and all wrapped up in half truths and half baked theories unsupported even by some of the scientists involved in the research.

It is quite evident that who ever authored this BBC article had a specific aim…to ‘sell’ AGW to us…they have ignored easily available information that shows clearly that Muller was never a Sceptic and that his ‘research’ is highly questionable and the conclusions drawn from it improbable.

None of this has stopped the BBC confidently asserting, and deliberately distorting the truth,  that Muller is a convert from scepticism and that his work is a validation of other climate scientists who proclaim CO2 is the cause of climate change.

The BBC claims that Muller is a newly converted believer in global warming from having been a sceptic.

But has he ever been a sceptic?  He certainly wasn’t  a year ago when he said this in 2011 in an article for the Wall Street Journal. ‘The case against global warming scepticism……there were good reasons for doubt until now’

He’s always believed in global warming…and now declares it’s all definitely man made…..but he gives no proof…..the only ‘proof’ is that he claims CO2 rises in correlation with temperature….therefore must be the cause of warming.

Hang on….even Prof Phil Jones of the CRU admitted that temperatures rose up to 800 years before CO2 levels did…….and now we have increasing CO2 but no temperature rise for over a decade….explain that to me.

And it seems that Muller was in fact a fully paid up member of the man made global warming fraternity in 2004: (page 2)

“If you are concerned about global warming (as I am) and think that human-created carbon dioxide may contribute (as I do), then you still should agree that we are much better off having broken the hockey stick.”

And how about this: 

“Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate.” – Richard Muller, 2003

The BBC got its scoop from the New York Times….but it hasn’t told you everything that Muller said….you can believe or not what he claims for temperature rises over 250 years…Judith Curry herself is sceptical of his results and refuses to be associated with them (for more of her see later).

Odd that the BBC missed out this rather big paragraph from Muller:

‘It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong.

Hurricane Katrina cannot be attributed to global warming. The number of hurricanes hitting the United States has been going down, not up; likewise for intense tornadoes. Polar bears aren’t dying from receding ice, and the Himalayan glaciers aren’t going to melt by 2035. And it’s possible that we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago, during the “Medieval Warm Period” or “Medieval Optimum,” an interval of warm conditions known from historical records and indirect evidence like tree rings. And the recent warm spell in the United States happens to be more than offset by cooling elsewhere in the world, so its link to “global” warming is weaker than tenuous.’

What other interesting and telling bits of information did the BBC miss out….as it would detract from the ‘truth’ of this story?

For a start it misses out this review of his work:

‘His latest BEST claims are, in my view, an embarrassment. The statement that he makes in his op-ed  is easily refuted.’

The BBC mentions Judith Curry…but fails to say why she didn’t back Muller’s last effort at massaging the figures……

Here is the BBC:

‘However, one collaborator on the previous tranche of Berkeley Earth project papers, Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology, declined to be included as an author on the latest one.

Commenting on the paper, Prof Curry said: “Their latest paper on the 250-year record concludes that the best explanation for the observed warming is greenhouse gas emissions. Their analysis is way oversimplistic and not at all convincing in my opinion.”‘

And here is the original story in all its glory:

‘A leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped.

Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis.

Prof Curry is a distinguished climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers.  Like the scientists exposed then by leaked emails from East Anglia University’s Climatic Research Unit, her colleagues from the BEST project seem to be trying to ‘hide the decline’ in rates of global warming.
A report to be published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation includes a graph of world average temperatures over the past ten years, drawn from the BEST project’s data and revealed on its website.

This graph shows that the trend of the last decade is absolutely flat, with no increase at all – though the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly.

‘This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting,’ Prof Curry said. ‘Whatever it is that’s going on here, it doesn’t look like it’s being dominated by CO2.’

In a 2004 Technology Review article,[9] Muller supported the findings of Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick in which they criticized the research, led by Michael E. Mann, which produced the so-called “hockey stick graph” of global temperatures over the past millennium, on the grounds that it did not do proper principal component analysis (PCA).[10] In the article, Richard Muller stated:

McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.

Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called “Monte Carlo” analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!

That discovery hit me like a bombshell, and I suspect it is having the same effect on many others. Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics. How could it happen?[9]

He went on to state “If you are concerned about global warming (as I am) and think that human-created carbon dioxide may contribute (as I do), then you still should agree that we are much better off having broken the hockey stick.’

One last thing about Muller….he has a dog in this fight….

‘Muller is President and Chief Scientist of Muller & Associates, an international consulting group specializing in energy-related issues

‘We know that in order to be effective, solutions must be sustainable… and we know that for businesses, sustainable solutions must be profitable as well.‘

Sustainable?  We all know what that means…..wind turbines and solar power….all funded with heavy  subsidies to the companies.

Odd that the BBC’s environmental correspondent doesn’t mention that Muller runs a company dependent on the energy sector…..as does Tim Yeo, as does Al Gore….funny how these climate crusaders all tell us how much we need to stop global warming by buying the very kit they just happen to sell.

Odd. Very odd.

Corrupt some might say.

Oh yes…how very funny that the Koch Foundation are funding this ‘research’……Black would have written that with gritted teeth!

Post Script:

Via WUWT:

http://www.rossmckitrick.com/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/30/new-data-old-claims-about-volcanoes/#more-68323

Seems that BEST is short for ‘Best Guess’ when it comes to climate science.

The Telegraph’s Met Office expert tells us (no link yet) that 1948 had similar weather patterns to ours this year…..with high temperatures and heavy rainfall.

In 1948 the highest temperature recorded was 35° c with rainfall of over 1200 mm for the year.(one of the highest)….and the driest year since 1910 was in 1933.

The early summer was very wet followed by a heat wave which was then followed by a very wet August……apart from August it’s sounding remarkably familiar.

And yet we are told this is a year of records and we’re still going to fry if we don’t build more windmills…Christopher Booker in the Telegraph calculates to meet the Ed Miliband inspired CO2 reduction  requirements we will need to build another 32,000 wind turbines.

We are also told that man made global warming didn’t start before the 1970’s….so what caused the heatwave in 1948 and in previous years?…and if it didn’t start until the 1970’s why are we supposed to be guilty about the Industrial Revolution?

Looking at the previously quoted Guardian rainfall record rainfall has stayed pretty consistent throughout the last 100 years…and you will find if you dig out temperature records that temperatures are pretty consistent over the last 100 years also.

And let’s look at how the BBC’s Harrabin has been reporting the latest revelations about the wind farm subsidies only being cut by 10%….

‘On the face of it this is a win for Ed Davey – angrily fighting off the chancellor who was under pressure from right-wing rural conservatives who don’t like wind turbines in the countryside.

Uncertainty over the direction of government energy policy has been criticised by the industry and has lead to delays in investment.

Wind farm company RES, which generates about 10% of the UK’s onshore wind energy, said the subsidy announcement showed the government’s commitment to renewables.’

Nothing perjorative about that then…and look…the government is committed to renewables?…despite evidence to the contrary…it’s the Liberals and Tim Yeo…the man with many ‘renewable industry’ financial interests, who are banging the drum.

In this report  Harrabin tells us that the UK body that represents the wind farm industry here will take the government to court if it cuts the subsidy by more than 10%….but nowhere does he mention that it is foreign firms that are getting the biggest slice of the cake when it comes to handouts of tax payers money…..which goes abroad to fill their government’s coffers whilst emptying ours.

Here’s the Telegraph being somewhat more honest and open:

Foreign energy firms pressured ministers to keep wind farm subsidies high

Ministers were “bounced” into retaining large subsidies for controversial on-shore wind farms by foreign-based energy companies who threatened to pull jobs and cash out of Britain.

I’m certain that many BBC staff will be celebrating the end of their final salary pension scheme along with their bosses who indulged in a slap up champagne fueled celebration paid for by the firm that did the knife work, KPMG…one of the world’s biggest accountancy firms.

I guess corporate sponsorship is OK when you’re on the receiving end.

….And isn’t it a paradox that probably the world’s biggest and most powerful media organisation complains so bitterly about other commercial corporations…ones who make an honest living…or at least work for their money?