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How The Green Lobby Changed BBC Policy

Blogger Reveals Secret 28 Who Greened The BBC



[The BBC crisis] is like watching the collapse of a small totalitarian state, its dark secrets – previously known only to terrified inhabitants – being finally subjected to vivid light. Some of the more famous and eloquent inhabitants even dare to speak out as a regime implodes. The implosion was bound to happen at some point, as inevitable as the crisis that engulfed out-of-control newspapers the summer before last or the one that continues to challenge the banks. –Steve Richards, The Independent, 13 November 2012
Did anyone hear Stott vs. Houghton on Today, BBC Radio 4 this morning? Woeful stuff really. This is one reason why Tyndall is sponsoring [Roger Harrabin’s] Cambridge Media/Environment Programme to starve this type of reporting at source. –-Mike Hulme, University of East Anglia, Climategate email 2496 The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus [on anthropogenic climate change]. --John Bridcut, BBC Trust report on impartiality, May 2007

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Yesterday night this site has seen the second large journalistic scoop of my life (so far): “Full List of Participants to the BBC CMEP Seminar on 26 January 2006.” In Jan 2006 the BBC held a meeting of “the best scientific experts” to decide BBC policy on climate change reporting. The BBC has been in court blocking FOI attempts to get the list of the 28 attendees, but it’s just been discovered on the wayback machine. It turns out that only 3 were current scientists (all alarmists). The rest were activists or journalists. The BBC sent four low level representatives: Peter Rippon, Steve Mitchell, Helen Boaden, George Enwistle. All have since risen to power. Amazingly, those are also the exact four who have thus far resigned this week over the false paedophilia accusations against Lord McAlpine. --Maurizio Morabito, Omnologos, 13 November 2012 We now know that the BBC decided to abandon balance in its coverage of climate on the advice of a small coterie of green activists, including the campaign director of Greenpeace. This shows that the "shoddy journalism" of Newsnight's recent smear was no "lapse" of standards at all. BBC news programs have for years been poorly checked recitations of the work of activists. -–Bishop Hill, 13 November 2012 [The list] confirms the accuracy of Harrabin's description of the composition of the invitees, with most coming from industry, think tanks and NGOs. And as suspected, climate campaigners Greenpeace are present, while actual scientific experts are thin on the ground: not one attendee deals with attribution science, the physics of global warming. These are scarcely "some of the best scientific experts", whose input could justify a historic abandonment of the BBC's famous impartiality. --Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 13 November 2012 We now know that someone within the BBC told Bridcut, when he was researching his report [on impartiality], that a seminar ‘with the best scientific experts’ informed a major editorial decision on how climate change was to be presented to the public at a crucial moment in the battle to persuade the public to take anthropogenic global warming seriously. What the Saville scandal has shown us is that there is a culture of deceit - and of turning a blind eye to unwelcome problems - at the BBC which extends back over decades. The BBC must be forced to institute a proper inquiry into why Bridcut was misinformed and then tens of thousands of pounds in legal costs were committed to keeping the affair under wraps, just like Saville’s appalling behaviour. That is the next task. As a first step I have asked the BBC’s Litigation Department to confirm or deny that the list Maurizio has found is the one that I requested at the hearing a fortnight ago. –Tony Newbery, Harmless Sky, 13 November 2012 Just when you thought the BBC had no more scandals, [Maurizio Morabito] has revealed what the Beeb tried very hard to cover up: the 28 mysterious individuals who have been informing its climate change reporting policy. As a state-funded broadcaster, the BBC has a duty to provide balance. It rejected this on its environmental coverage after taking advice from people in a now-infamous 2006 seminar from people whose identity the BBC was keen to keep secret. [The blogger] revealed a list which the BBC cannot describe as a bunch of dispassionate scientists: it’s a veritable who’s who of the green lobby. So now we know the names, the remaining question is: why did the BBC feel it was so important to cover the identities up? Their official explanation — protecting journalistic sources — simply does not stand up. --Sebastian Payne, The Spectator, 13 November 2012 The BBC conference was billed as bringing together “the best scientific experts”. Scientists, “scientists” and hippy campaigners, but what the Beeb will be most embarrassed by is the representative from the disgraced Climatic Research Unit who were exposed three years later for manipulating data to fit their arguments. Emails from Mike Hulme, second on that list, were at the heart of the Climategate scandall. No wonder the BBC are wasting your money hiding this… --Guido Fawkes, 13 November 2012 It was only last weekend that the BBC’s Environment Analyst Roger Harrabin and Dr Joe Smith of the Open University made headlines in the Mail on Sunday newspaper. This was because their jointly run - Cambridge Media and Environment Program – (CMEP) that had organised seminars at the BBC between 1996 and 2009 had been revealed to have received funding from the Tyndall Centre (UEA) from 2002 -2006. These facts alone seems to be a significant conflict of interest that should concern the BBC Trust. The new emails reveal that not only was the CMEP being sponsored by the Tyndall Centre (UEA) to promote its agenda in the media, but at the same Roger Harrabin was on the Advisory board of the Tyndall Centre. --Barry Woods, Watts Up With That, 27 November 2011

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