TwentyEightGate: How the BBC justified breaking its charter commitment to impartiality

This is a followup to yesterdays post on 28gate, an emerging scandal at the BBC

 

The BBC is in crisis. Revelations over ex-employee and paedophile Jimmy Savile, and its false accusations of child sex abuse against top tory benefactor Lord McAlpine have led to the resignation of the Director General George Entwhistle after 54 days in post, and several top news executives; Helen Boaden – Head of News and Peter Rippon – editor of ‘The World at One’ and ‘PM’ among them.

All these three were present  at the IBT organised seminar: ‘Climate Change – the Challenge to Broadcasting’ which was held at the BBC’s Television Centre in White City London on 26 January 2006. The seminar ran from 9.30am to 5.30prn. Later the BBC said, concerning what happened at this meeting:

“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].” From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel, Page 40

So who were these “best scientific experts” that the BBC would entrust with the almighty responsibility of deciding that balanced reporting would be abandoned and that sceptics of man made climate change would be effectively silenced, allowing AGW advocacy to become dominant in BBC reporting?

The BBC refused FOI requests and even went to court with six high powered lawyers to prevent bloggers like Andrew Montford and Tony Newbery finding out. The issue of the identities and competences of these 28 people has become a touchstone of credibility for the BBC, right at a time when they are in great difficulty on other issues. Then last night, another blogger, Maurizio Morabito, tracked down the relevant IBT document using internet archiving service The Wayback Machine and all was revealed.

It turns out there were two actively practising scientists well known for their strongly pro AGW stance, and a disparate collection of representatives from NGO’s such as Greenpeace and the Stop Climate Chaos, commercially interested parties standing to gain from the promotion of AGW such as British Petroleum,  and a couple of academics who are closely involved with climate advocacy and campaigning groups.

So now the BBC has yet another big problem on it’s hands. It turns out it has lied to the public who pay for it about the makeup of the group which has determined it’s climate reporting policy. This is no small matter considering the billions of pounds involved in the Green energy industry. Additional carbon taxation has directly led to fuel poverty for hundreds of thousands. The excess cold related deaths in the UK have shot up in the last few years. We hear stories of pensioners buying secondhand books by the yard and burning them to keep warm.

As an example of the inter-related connections, here is an example of someone in close contact wit the scientists at the centre of the Climategate scandal which broke in Nov 2009

Attendee Mike Hulme of University of East Anglia (Home of CRU) and the Tyndall Centre funded CMEP to run these seminars, Mike appears at the seminars, and Mike invited BBC’s Roger Harrabin (and Co founder of CMEP) onto the Tyndall Centres advisory board at the same time as all these seminars, whilst funding these seminars..

From the Climategate 2 emails, Mike Hulmes (Tyndall) intentions are clear for CMEP seminars, persuade the BBC to keeps sceptics (in this case Prof Philip Stott) off the airwaves.

Mike Hulme:

“Did anyone hear Stott vs. Houghton on Today, radio 4 this morning? Woeful stuff really. This is one reason why Tyndall is sponsoring the Cambridge Media/Environment Programme to starve this type of reporting at source.”  Climategate email

When did Roger Harrabin step down from Tyndall advisory board?
(and he no made no mention, when reporting BBC climategate, of his connections to advocacy groups)

The BBC has some explaining to do. In fact, The BBC has got a lot of explaining to do.