BBC bias gets imperialistic: recolonises Australia

This is the second half of an article on the UK website Conservative Woman. Check out the link to Jo Nova’s article too.

Back in October, behind the masquerade of what the BBC’s army of 180 publicists claim is the world’s ‘most trusted media brand’, the Corporation launched with a glossy release a multi-pronged initiative to broadcast to Australia material about the G20 summit.

Chris Davies, Director of Sales and Marketing, for BBC Global News Limited, one of the BBC’s subsidiaries that is the engine of the growth, said: “Australia is a priority market for us and with this local market investment together with our large network of international journalists, we are uniquely placed to offer readers stories they don’t normally hear from local media, giving them the full picture on news that affects them.”

Excuse me? That sounds very like the BBC believes ‘local media’ are not doing their job. How very patronising.  Those colonialist oiks have not had the benefit of the BBC’s version of ‘impartiality’.

Ben Pile: Letter to the Climate Shrinks on the BBC

Letter to the Climate Shrinks
Posted by Ben Pile on January 25, 2013

BBC Radio 4 show, Thinking Allowed had a feature on the psychoanalysts perspective on climate change this week. Bishop Hill picked up the story. Thinking Allowed is one of my favourite programmes, so I was a tad disappointed to hear that thinking isn’t allowed if it’s thinking that contradicts climate orthodoxy. Here’s my letter to the programme.

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Dear Laurie,

I refer to your section on climate change and psychoanalysis in your most recent programme.

Your feature frames the problem as a failure to recognise what one of your guests called ‘the reality of climate change’, which moved on to a discussion about ‘types of denial’. However, if psychoanalysis has anything to say in the climate debate, it must speak to climate sceptics as much as their counterparts.

Sally Weintrobe lets the cat out of the bag when she claims that we are ‘increasingly aware’ of ‘weird weather’, citing hurricane Sandy and the UK’s recent wet weather. Yet there was nothing remarkable about the weather last year. The IPCC’s recent special report on extreme weather found that there is no evidence of increased frequency or intensity of storms, floods or droughts, or losses caused by them attributable to anthropogenic climate change.

So psychoanalysis must have something to say about Sally Weintrobe’s misconception of the ‘reality’ of climate change represented by the IPCC. Her views on climate seem to be as far out of kilter with the scientific consensus as any “denier’s”.

Seminars and Interview: A busy week behind the scenes

It has been an interesting week. On Tuesday I met with Jerry Ravetz, who came up to the History and Philosophy of Science dept. at Leeds on Tuesday to deliver two seminars. The first was on Thomas Kuhn’s seminal book ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’. At the start of the seminar, he passed around a copies of page 5 of the introduction.