Bias comes in many guises. A Biased BBC reader notes concern about the BBC using non-BBC material on news bulletins and their NORTHERN IRELAND website without declaration or caveat;

“In the case of the driver last night in Newtownabbey a clip of the incident was played this morning at 9am on Radio Ulster with I think no introduction at all and certainly no mention of the source of the material and without the usual “the BBC has not been able to verify this” caveat as done on Syria.

This was what they did last summer by endlessly displaying at the top of their website, the clip supplied by Sinn Fein of the band parading in circles outside St Patrick’s which emphasis ensured marches along Donegall Street became a huge issue for months, and will be for decades. They also failed entirely to put the matter in any context  e.g. one small fact being circling was what the band did when the parade stopped, anywhere. Do they have protocols for such use of externally supplied material and if so why aren’t they using them here? Would they use the same editorial judgment to broadcast if it was a strike and picket by hospital or transport workers (like BA stewards two years ago)?”

UPDATE

Subsequently the BBC have rephrased the wording to the incident. The are no longer claiming he was a road user?? However the BBC are still saying he was stopped from trying to visit his seriously ill wife in hospital. This is completely at odds with the eye witness accounts.

UPDATE

BBC NI website 16.47 12 Jan

‘In Rathcoole in Newtownabbey, a distressed pensioner pleaded with protesters to let him pass through a road block so he could make his way to visit his seriously ill wife in hospital.
The protesters jeered at the elderly man and refused to let him through.’

BBC presenter William Crawley has been lobbing fairly provocative if seemingly  innocuous comment on to his Facebook page every couple of hours says:

William Crawley 2 hours ago via Twitter

• Contrary to rumours of fake audio, the recording of a distressed pensioner last night was made by BBC reporters live at the scene.

Impartially reporting the facts or vigourously pursuing an agenda?

BBC have been bigging up Heseltine’s attack on Cameron’s alleged desire to negotiate new relationship with EU. They have kept this narrative going all week. First, US criticism of putative changes in EU relationship, then German,  now Hezza.  I suppose anyone who stabs Thatcher in back is assured BBC gratitude?

Sometimes, I hear things on the BBC that make me do a double take For the past day the BBC has been trolling the notion that half the worlds food “is thrown away” with UK supermarkets getting accused of wanton waste. On Today this morning, Evan Davies speculated that “Supermarkets give us things we do not want” and therefore end up jinking such produce. What a remarkably stupid and left wing idea. Has he not heard of supply and demand? Supermarkets only provide things they think we will want. Sure, sometimes they may get it wrong but the notion of Supermarkets imposing “things” that we do not want is detached from all commercial reality. Perhaps Evan has been working for too long for organisation that DOES impose things on us – the BBC?

Better late than never and by popular request! BBC bothering you? Detail it here!!!!

The BBC’s environment correspondent Matt McGrath reveals that when the science doesn’t match his beliefs he doesn’t bother with the science:

I don’t know about you, but the recent row about Met Office climate predictions and a slowdown in global warming has left me shrugging my shoulders.

Yes, obviously the science is important and the issue is critical to our survival as species etc etc, but arguments about experimental models and degrees of difference seem really far removed from the concerns and interests of many people.

Get to the bottom of the article and you see he changes his mind about the importance of science…when it supports his argument…whilst ‘appearing’ to present a sceptical viewpoint he in fact presses the man-made global warming view…..

Meanwhile, despite the supposition in the UK that global warming may actually be stuck on pause over the past two decades, new figures from the US suggest that 2012 was the warmest year ever recorded.

The article is about the bushfires in Australia which the Greens are overjoyed to see occurring as they believe they point to God scourging the Earth of evil CO2 polluters and climate change deniers.

McGrath again attempts a subtle sleight of hand….making you believe that scientists are cautious about claiming a link with global warming…only for him to add that ‘the connection has become a bit more  certain’…..so, yes, they’re  ‘cautious’…but you know what…global warming is man-made:

‘Politicians are often quick to point the finger at a vague notion of global warming.

“Whilst you would not put any one event down to climate change,” said Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, “We do know over time that as a result of climate change we are going to see more extreme weather events and conditions.”

Scientists, though, have been remarkably silent on the connection.

The connection between climate change and wildfires has become a bit more certain. In a paper published last year, leading Australian experts predicted an increased risk of fire in some of the areas now suffering the worst affects, including Tasmania and South Australia.

But the report couldn’t clearly identify the source of that change.’

In the article he is quick to list ‘record’ temperatures and severity of the bushfires…however just as with the BBC’s report of ‘record’ rainfall in the UK he fails, conveniently, to look back in history.

Bushfires are not new to Australia.

Extraordinarily extreme bushfires are not new to Australia.

‘Bushfires in Australia are frequently occurring events during the hotter months of the year due to Australia’s mostly hot, dry climate. Large areas of land are ravaged every year by bushfires, which also cause property damage and loss of life.
Certain native flora in Australia have evolved to rely on bushfires as a means of reproduction and fire events are an interwoven and an essential part of the ecology of the continent
In some eucalypt and banksia species, for example, fire causes seed pods to open, which allows them to germinate.  Fire also encourages the growth of new grassland plants. Other species have adapted to recover quickly from fire.’

In 1851 there were the Black Thursday bushfires in Victoria with 5 million hectares burnt    and  1 million sheep and thousands of cattle killed.

In 1938-39 there were the Black Friday bushfires in Victoria in which 2 million hectares  were burnt.

In 1944 the bushfires  in Victoria burnt 1 million hectares.

In 1961 the  Western Australian bushfires burnt  1.8 million hectares.

We have this alarming report from the BBC:

Academies could ‘fuel social segregation’

The rising number of schools in England with academy status could fuel rather than improve social segregation, says a report by the Academies Commission.

The report says some academies may “covertly” select pupils by using extra information on families or holding social events with prospective parents.

I heard an interview on the radio about this and what was immediately clear  was that it was unclear just where the evidence came from to support the claims…..the person from the Academies Commission (so called…it is entirely unconnected with government….and is a private initiative) was very coy….only saying some parents and schools had complained.

Well we know the reaction of the NUT and other teacher unions to academies….and who were the parents?  You may think hardly a disinterested bunch in undermining academies and Michael Gove.

And just what is the ‘Pearson Think Tank‘ which set up the Academies Commission as the BBC tells us, but without revealing any more…..

The Academies Commission was set up by the Pearson Think Tank and the RSA charity to examine the implications of the “mass academisation” of state schools.

Having read the below you might have thought the BBC, well  known for its determined efforts not to allow a right wing think tank or ‘pressure group’ to go unlabelled as such in the interests of balance, would have something to say about what turns out to be an enormous corporation that has its fingers in many educational pies….and may have an interest in stirring up discontent about school standards…so that it can then provide the ‘solution’….all at a reasonable cost of course…….

I guess the BBC are happy to look the other way when one of the Coalition’s flag ship, and most successful policies, is under attack….or perhaps it doesn’t want to attack a company that it works closely with in its BBC Active capacity….

Pearson’s core education publishing business includes, in this country, the brands of Heinemann, Longman, BBC Active and the Edexcel publishing label.

The Guardian reveals many doubts about Pearson:

Stephen Ball, professor of the sociology of education at London University’s Institute of Education and an expert on education business, sees Pearson’s school-improvement model, alongside its policy work, as particularly interesting. He says: “I think it’s related to an overall strategy: they want to offer products and services in all areas of school practice: assessment, pedagogy, curriculum and management, and they want to create the possibility for that through policy work.

“They want to have indirect influence in policy to create opportunities for business expansion. It’s a very well thought-out business strategy. I think we should be thinking about it, because a lot of it is going unnoticed.“

Or maybe noticed but ignored at least whilst it attacks Coalition policies.

“Current Media was built based on a few key goals: to give voice to those who are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling. Al-Jazeera, like Current, believes that facts and truth lead to a better understanding of the world around us.”

That was Al Gore explaining away his sale of his media company to Al-Jazeera …whose reputation for truth might make Gore think they are a perfect match judging by his climate film ‘The Inconvenient Truth’….which was anything but the truth being a one sided, highly political polemic jammed packed full of  ‘errors‘.

It is a shame that just like the BBC these fine words are no more than just that, elegantly expressed sentiments with little evidence of any attempt to fulfil them in the real world….or as Christopher Booker puts it…. ‘the BBC’s support for the embattled orthodoxy has been so one-sided that it came to be seen as a scandal in its own right.’

However it seems that even the BBC’s own concrete belief in man made global warming has been shaken.

Here Roger Harriban has more hedges than the Grand National whilst the BBC’s David Shukman looks decidedly like a man preparing the ground for a future possible ‘reappraisal’ of the ‘settled science’ in this latest article….Climate model forecast is revised

Despite the possibility that by 2017 there will have been no rise in temperature for two decades Shukman still presses the Met Office belief that the trend is upward and will continue so….whilst managing to stress how uncertain the science is.

Interesting to see how the ‘Sceptics’ are labelled…dismissed as mere ’Bloggers’ with suggestions of ‘conspiracy theorist’ about them.  So despite the computer models failing utterly to predict the climate,  even on a relatively short term basis never mind over 100 years, the BBC still denies any dissenters a serious voice.

In this, a pro AGW  and anti-sceptic article, the importance of good reporting is stressed…..it is of course right about that if nothing else…..suggesting a well informed Public is essential for government policy making in a Democracy….

Is journalism failing on climate?
Stefan Rahmstorf discusses the latest study in ERL on “Cross-national comparison of the presence of climate scepticism in the print media in six countries, 2007”.

The media are the most important means by which lay people obtain their information about science. Good science journalism is therefore a decisive factor for the long-term success of modern society. Good science journalism clearly must be critical journalism, and it requires journalists who know what is what, who can put things into a perspective, and who are able to make well-informed judgements.

Here are some highlights from Shukman’s article:

‘The UK Met Office has revised one of its forecasts for how much the world may warm in the next few years.
It says that the average temperature is likely to rise by 0.43 C by 2017 – as opposed to an earlier forecast that suggested a warming of 0.54C.
The explanation is that a new kind of computer model using different parameters has been used…..it still stands by its longer-term projections.
These forecast significant warming over the course of this century.

If the forecast is accurate, the result would be that the global average temperature would have remained relatively static for about two decades.
Blog suspicions
An apparent standstill in global temperatures is used by critics of efforts to tackle climate change as evidence that the threat has been exaggerated.

The most obvious explanation is natural variability – the cycles of changes in solar activity and the movements and temperatures of the oceans.
The fact that the revised projection was posted on the Met Office website without any notice on December 24 last year has fuelled suspicions among bloggers.

This is an emerging and highly complex area of science because of the interplay of natural factors and manmade greenhouse gases at a time when a key set of temperatures – in the deep ocean – is still relatively unknown.
A paper published last month in the journal Climate Dynamics, authored by scientists from the Met Office and 12 other international research centres, combined different models to produce a forecast for the next decade.
It said: “Decadal climate prediction is immature, and uncertainties in future forcings, model responses to forcings, or initialisation shocks could easily cause large errors in forecasts.”
Scrutiny of Met Office forecasts and climate science generally is set to increase in the build-up to the publication of the next assessment by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in September.’

The BBC’s tame scientist, Prof. Steve Jones, a geneticist, also has great disdain for the sceptics and is avidly pro AGW claiming….the sheer nastiness and clear prejudice of his comments should have precluded him from having any place in a review of bias in the BBC‘s science reporting…:

‘‘Global warming is a myth.” Type that into a search engine and you get thousands of hits….The subject has, alas, become the home of boring rants by obsessives. ‘

However it seems ‘myths’ can be used to support AGW when it suits……

‘Gods, floods – and global warming
The new science of geomythology links ancient legends and natural disasters – and supports climate change , writes Steve Jones.

Ice ages come in slowly, but go out with a bang.

The collapse came when climate reached a tipping point.

Then came the end.

A slight increase in the Sun’s output was matched by the disruption of deep ocean currents caused by cold fresh water sinking from the melting floes above. As the glaciers began to dissolve, their waters roared towards the sea.

Most of those ingredients are evident today, but millions insist that the warming story is made up. It’s enough to make a frog laugh.’

Whilst Jones and Co seek to use myths to back up their science back in the real world the truth is out there if the hard working and integrity driven journalists of the BBC would care to look.

Here is a small but telling comment from an environmental report which says that it is not wind farms that will save the world but a drive to make energy use more efficient….

‘How much energy the world consumes going forward turns out to be a much bigger swing factor for climate change than the availability of technologies like solar and wind power, biofuels, and so on,” said IIASA researcher David McCollum, another co-author.”Energy efficiency, improved urban planning, lifestyle changes – these things on the demand side of the energy equation are so important; yet they receive relatively little attention compared to the supply side.” ’

There is also this inconvenient fact about wind power….
‘Just before Christmas, the Renewable Energy Foundation published The Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark, showing that the economic life of onshore wind turbines is between 10 and 15 years, not the 20 to 25 years projected by the wind industry itself, and used for government projections.
“Bluntly, wind turbines onshore and offshore still cost too much and wear out far too quickly to offer the developing world a realistic alternative to coal.”
As a consequence, the lifetime cost per unit (MWh) of electricity generated by wind power will be considerably higher than official estimates.’

Perhaps this report explains partially the BBC’s failure to report the full breadth of the climate debate:

‘A new report into science and the media has found that in some respects specialist science news reporting in the UK is in relatively good health.

But the research also warns about the serious threat to the quality and independence of science reporting posed by the wider crisis in journalism.

“Most of the journalists we interviewed complain about severe workload increases, almost half say they’re mainly passive recipients of news rather than uncovering original stories themselves, a fifth say they don’t have enough time to fact-check stories they publish, and around the same number say they rely too much on PR material. These are all serious problems for the quality and independence of science news.”

This article on pro sceptic newspapers can be turned on its head to give us an insight into the BBC’s attitude towards ‘Sceptics’, an attitude not so much based upon attempting a real balance in science reporting but on the BBC’s  own political leanings:

‘There is some evidence for arguing that there is a strong correspondence between the political leaning of a newspaper and its willingness to quote or use uncontested sceptical voices in opinion pieces. ‘

Whilst newspapers can do as they like and support what they like the BBC is by law supposed to be impartial and balanced in its reporting….it is anything but in many fields, climate just being one of them in which it shows a distinct bias towards one side of the argument.

Should the present stalling of global warming continue there are going to be a lot of red faces and a great deal of back tracking and explaining to do.

It might seem fortuitous that Richard Black jumped ship, or was pushed, before the reckoning comes.  Harrabin must already be making room in his phone book for the hated ‘bloggers’ numbers just in case.

Addendum:  Anyone with time on their hands might want to have a look at this site which gathers together all the climate articles from around the world on a daily basis.

‘The Carbon Capture Report (http://www.carboncapturereport.org/) is a free and open service of the University of Illinois devoted to being the preeminent global resource for tracking worldwide perception and developments in Climate Change, Carbon Capture, Carbon Credits, Alternative Energy, Renewable Energy, Green Energy, Biofuels, Geothermal, Hydroelectric, Natural Gas, Nuclear, Solar, Wind, Coal, and Oil. With subscribers in more than 100 countries the Report has become the go-to resource for daily insight into the global media discourse.’

At last. The BBC has finally found a Republican that they actually like. Well, a former Republican to be precise. I’m talking about Chuck Nagel, the Jew-hating Iran appeasing choice to head the Pentagon. Good ol’ Chuck – Mark Mardell was virtually swooning, praising Obama’s bravery in this choice.

A Biased BBC reader sent this!

The BBC is carrying a fawning article about Arthur Wharton – see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-20878659. Most people will never have heard of him, but he was apparently the first black professional footballer. He was, by many accounts, an interesting character and his story may well be deserving of a wider audience (he was also a preacher). But look how the BBC describes him: “one of the greatest ever British athletes”. Was he?

He was actually born in Ghana and of mixed background rather than being black. The BBC further tells us that he “played in goal for Darlington, Newcastle United, Sheffield United and Rotherham Town and other famous old clubs like Preston North End”. Indeed he did, but in a football career lasting 17 years he only made a total of 16 appearances, of which just 2 were with Preston North End. He did not play internationally. Nor did he win any trophies or awards.

An interesting historical anomaly, yes. But hardly a black Victorian Stanley Matthews or Bobby Charlton, much less one of the “greatest ever British athletes”. Except to the racialisers of the BBC, of course.”