As the ice caps continue their collapse into the sea at a rate far faster than anticipated, so too do the last shreds of the BBC’s dwindling credibility. A few days ago, I wrote to Peters Barron and Horrocks of the BBC, after their remarks in Edinburgh criticising a proposed day of broadcasting on climate change, provisionally titled Planet Relief. As it turned out, Barron’s criticisms of the project were in part based on the view that the “causes of climate change” constitute “a matter of controversy”. A similar level of controversy, of course, exists on the issue of the link between HIV and AIDS, or smoking and lung cancer, though this seems not to exercise Barron particularly.
Now the BBC have scrapped the idea entirely - although this decision apparently “was not made in light of the recent debate around impartiality”. That’s right, reader: the shelving of a programme a full 18 months in development a week after it came under attack by two very high-profile journalists is a matter of mere coincidence, before you go getting any ideas.
It appears that Barron and Horrocks were following the lead of another major journalistic celebrity, Jeremy Paxman, who stated that the BBC’s coverage of climate change “abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago”. Of course, as I and others have suggested, the BBC’s very concept of “impartiality” is so thoroughly selective and weighted as to be utterly partial in and of itself. But they don’t appear to have taken these observations on board, and so it is that the verbal onslaught has, in this instance, been such a success. Perhaps it’s time for a counter-offensive.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/contactus/serious_form.shtml (BBC Programme Complaints Unit)
fraser.steel.01@bbc.co.uk (Head of the BBC Programme Complaints Unit)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints (General Complaints)
