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BBC “Too PC – Ignores Climate Change Sceptics”
Veteran newsreader Peter Sissons has launched a scathing attack on the slipping standards and incompetence at the BBC that prompted him to leave the corporation after 20 years.
In a frank and biting interview, Sissons lifted the lid on the political correctness that has seeped into the heart of the organisation.
He went on to address the corporation’s view on global warming. He claims it is ‘effectively BBC policy’ to ignore climate change sceptics.
Daily Mail: ‘The BBC became too PC for me, says veteran Sissons’
In a wide-ranging attack, he also claims it is now ‘effectively BBC policy’ to stifle critics of the consensus view on global warming. He says: ‘I believe I am one of a tiny number of BBC interviewers who have so much as raised the possibility that there is another side to the debate on climate change. The Corporation’s most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that “the science is settled”, when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn’t. ‘But it is effectively BBC policy… that those views should not be heard.’
Mail on Sunday: ‘Peter Sissons: BBC standards are falling – and bosses are too scared to do anything about it’
CRN comment:
BBC environment correspondent Roger Harrabin runs the mysterious ‘Cambridge Environment and Media Programme.’ I think we can guess what sort of people are members, and the sort of people likely to be excluded. Richard Black, another prominent BBC environment correspondent likes to use the headline ‘No sun link to climate’ when a scientific paper is published questioning the sun-climate link, but is remarkably silent when a paper supporting the link is published, or indeed is silent when any paper that links climate change to natural variability is published.
UPDATE:
On a wintry Saturday last December, there was what was billed as a major climate change rally in London.
The leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, went into the Westminster studio to be interviewed by me on the BBC News channel. She clearly expected what I call a ‘free hit’; to be allowed to voice her views without being challenged on them.
pointed out to her that the climate didn’t seem to be playing ball at the moment. We were having a particularly cold winter, even though carbon emissions were increasing. Indeed, there had been no warming for ten years, contradicting all the alarming computer predictions.
Well, she was outraged. I don’t have the actual transcript, but Miss Lucas told me angrily that it was disgraceful that the BBC – the BBC! – should be giving any kind of publicity to those sort of views.
I believe I am one of a tiny number of BBC interviewers who have so much as raised the possibility that there is another side to the debate on climate change.
The Corporation’s most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that ‘the science is settled’, when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn’t.
But it is effectively BBC policy, enthusiastically carried out by the BBC environment correspondents, that those views should not be heard – witness the BBC statement last year that ‘BBC News currently takes the view that their reporting needs to be calibrated to take into account the scientific consensus that global warming is man-made’.
Politically the argument may be settled, but any inquisitive journalist can find ample evidence that scientifically it is not.
I was not proud to be working for an organisation with a corporate mind so closed on such an important issue. Disquiet over my interview with Miss Lucas, incidentally, went right to the top at the BBC although, naturally, they never sought to discuss it with me.
For me, this is not an issue about the climate, it is an issue about the duty of the journalist.
The truth of the matter is that for all the above reasons, I was no longer comfortable at BBC News. It remains an iconic organisation, but it stands at the crossroads.
Read more here.
July 18th, 2009 at 5:20 am
Wow thats amazing, ask Caroline Lucas a few very straight forward questions— the ones that a lot of people would like answered and she responds agressively.
I investigate fraud for a living and the number of times someone caught and asked to faced the facts, responds agressively is amazing. Its a standard counter fraud response, try and distance yourself from reality, attack accusers, bubble with indignation etc