by Guest

contribution by Hengist McStone

I’ve found quite an extraordinary broadcast from last year which examines bias on the BBC’s coverage of the climategate story less than two weeks into the affair.

Essentially the programme suggests there may be a pro-green or pro-climate science bias, by inviting two denialists on to the programme to ask why hasn’t the BBC given more ‘skeptical’ coverage to the story.

What is extraordinary is that this was broadcast on Decmber 4th 2009 when no facts were known about the email leak.



The broadcast reports skeptical activists conspiracy theories at one point even adding words in to the emails to make a completely bogus point. An email is shown saying ‘the CRU at Anglia University admit “hiding the the decline” (in global temperatures)’ .

For the record the CRU do not admit any such thing and no hacked email says that either. This is an email sent to the BBC and the words in brackets have been added by a skeptical activist. The University of East Anglia explained in late February exactly what the phrase “hide the decline” means.

This is a propagandist’s trick pretending to bend over backwards at being impartial (which we’ve seen before).

Rather than report facts, the BBC reports concerns about their own bias, but only from one side. It leaves the audience to conclude that the complainant has been wronged.

Not only that the two skeptic guests in the course of the programme managed to squeeze in a load of unchallenged gripes about the science and politics like suggesting ice is forming in Antarctica, not melting in the Arctic,general lack of examination of skeptical topics and complaints about the peer review process.

The BBC’s impartiality document states (pg 40) that skeptics get less than half the ‘space’ . Yet there are only four people in the studio including the presenter (who is presumably unconvinced either way). Two of those are skeptics. There are no proponents of AGW apart from Black, and no one to defend the scientists at all.

Here we see skeptical activists getting access to the airwaves only two weeks into the scandal to complain about nothing more than a percieved lack of speculation by the BBC. This, at a time when the only known fact was that the CRU had been hacked, which was of course a crime against the scientists.