Tuesday 8 July 2014

The BBC is brainwashing its news staff to deny "climate deniers" access to airtime

A formerly venerable broadcasting organisation is wasting license payers' money on brainwashing its news staff to deny critics of global warming access to airtime:

Reporters for BBC News are being directed to significantly curb the amount of air time they give to people with anti-science viewpoints — including people who deny climate change exists — in order to improve the accuracy and fairness of the network’s news coverage, according to a report released by the BBC’s governing body on Thursday.
The BBC Trust’s report was designed to assess the network’s impartiality in science coverage, in other words, whether it is staying neutral on critical issues. In order to be neutral when covering science, however, the BBC noted it needs to avoid “false balance,” a fallacy that occurs when two sides of an argument are assumed to have equal value.

“Science coverage does not simply lie in reflecting a wide range of views but depends on the varying degree of prominence such views should be given,” the report said.
The type of “false balance” news segment that the BBC is now actively trying to avoid is one that is fairly common in American network news’ climate change coverage. It involves putting one person who is well-versed on climate science next to a person who denies climate science, and having them debate.
Editorially, this type of debate makes the network look like it’s being balanced, giving equal opportunity to opposite viewpoints. However, because 95 to 97 percent of climate scientists agree that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing the planet to warm, that balance is false, giving disproportionate time to a viewpoint that is widely rejected in the scientific community.
In order to have a truly balanced and statistically representative debate about climate change, television news networks would have to pit 97 climate scientists against three climate deniers. Because that likely wouldn’t work very well, the BBC is favoring an approach that instead severely limits the amount of air time climate deniers are given.
So far, the report said, approximately 200 staff members have attended seminars and workshops aimed at improving the balance of their science coverage.

Fortunately, more and more people have decided to "favour an approach" that severely limits the amount of time spent listening to or watching BBC programmes.

1 comment:

A K Haart said...

I watch no "factual" BBC programmes at all. Apart from their lack of quality, I never know if I'm being fed an agenda so it isn't worth it.