IBT - The Lobby Behind BBC Reporting

[Teddy Bear]

At first, this 'find' was related to an attempted BBC cover-up, to not reveal who from the BBC attended a seminar concerning Climate Change back in 2006. But on further examination it reveals an international organisation comprised of members with various agendas, who apparently have found the way to control or strongly influence BBC reporting.

For this reason I have moved the findings to its own thread as it may well be dynamite.

I don't know how much licence payers money the BBC has spent so far on legal fees to avoid naming those who attended this seminar in 2006, but in a fantastic scoop, a blogger on the net has managed to obtain this information by knowing where to look.

I'll include the names below, they might be useful to cross link in the future.

Full List of Participants to the BBC CMEP Seminar on 26 January 2006
Posted on 2012/11/12 by Maurizio Morabito (omnologos)
This list has been obtained legally.

This is for Tony, Andrew, Benny, Barry and for all of us Harmless Davids.

January 26th 2006,

BBC Television Centre, London
Specialists:
Robert May, Oxford University and Imperial College London
Mike Hulme, Director, Tyndall Centre, UEA
Blake Lee-Harwood, Head of Campaigns, Greenpeace
Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen
Michael Bravo, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge
Andrew Dlugolecki, Insurance industry consultant
Trevor Evans, US Embassy
Colin Challen MP, Chair, All Party Group on Climate Change
Anuradha Vittachi, Director, Oneworld.net
Andrew Simms, Policy Director, New Economics Foundation
Claire Foster, Church of England
Saleemul Huq, IIED
Poshendra Satyal Pravat, Open University
Li Moxuan, Climate campaigner, Greenpeace China
Tadesse Dadi, Tearfund Ethiopia
Iain Wright, CO2 Project Manager, BP International
Ashok Sinha, Stop Climate Chaos
Andy Atkins, Advocacy Director, Tearfund
Matthew Farrow, CBI
Rafael Hidalgo, TV/multimedia producer
Cheryl Campbell, Executive Director, Television for the Environment
Kevin McCullough, Director, Npower Renewables
Richard D North, Institute of Economic Affairs
Steve Widdicombe, Plymouth Marine Labs
Joe Smith, The Open University
Mark Galloway, Director, IBT
Anita Neville, E3G
Eleni Andreadis, Harvard University
Jos Wheatley, Global Environment Assets Team, DFID
Tessa Tennant, Chair, AsRia
BBC attendees:
Jana Bennett, Director of Television
Sacha Baveystock, Executive Producer, Science
Helen Boaden, Director of News
Andrew Lane, Manager, Weather, TV News
Anne Gilchrist, Executive Editor Indies & Events, CBBC
Dominic Vallely, Executive Editor, Entertainment
Eleanor Moran, Development Executive, Drama Commissioning
Elizabeth McKay, Project Executive, Education
Emma Swain, Commissioning Editor, Specialist Factual
Fergal Keane, (Chair), Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Fran Unsworth, Head of Newsgathering
George Entwistle, Head of TV Current Affairs
Glenwyn Benson, Controller, Factual TV
John Lynch, Creative Director, Specialist Factual
Jon Plowman, Head of Comedy
Jon Williams, TV Editor Newsgathering
Karen O’Connor, Editor, This World, Current Affairs
Catriona McKenzie, Tightrope Pictures [e-mail]

BBC Television Centre, London (cont)
Liz Molyneux, Editorial Executive, Factual Commissioning
Matt Morris, Head of News, Radio Five Live
Neil Nightingale, Head of Natural History Unit
Paul Brannan, Deputy Head of News Interactive
Peter Horrocks, Head of Television News
Peter Rippon, Duty Editor, World at One/PM/The World this Weekend
Phil Harding, Director, English Networks & Nations
Steve Mitchell, Head Of Radio News
Sue Inglish, Head Of Political Programmes
Frances Weil, Editor of News Special Events

Now for Balen ;D

(hat-tip GCooper/Alan)

[Teddy Bear]

What’s also interesting is to see the members of the IBT – the people who have run the various seminars that the BBC have been attending since 2004

Now how might they have influenced BBC reporting over the years?

IBT is a membership based organisation. Our members determine our strategy, mission and vision. They come from a range of organisations who work in issues related to development, the environment and human rights. IBT is managed by a Board of Trustees who are all elected members.

We are always keen to extend our membership – since one of our principal activities is lobbying, the wider our membership the more effective our voice is. For further information about joining IBT contact IBT Director, Mark Galloway [e-mail]

IBT’s current membership includes the following organisations (with links to their home page):

ActionAid
Age UK
Amnesty
Anti-Slavery International
Bond
British Red Cross
Buglife
CAFOD
Christian Aid
Comic Relief
Concern
CRIN
DEC
HelpAge International
Human Rights Watch
IDS
Int Rescue Committee UK
International Service
Islamic Relief
Malaria Consortium
Media Trust
MSF
Muslim Aid
ONE
Oxfam
PANOS
Plan
Practical Action
Progressio
Raleigh International
Save the Children
Tearfund
Traidcraft Exchange
TVE
UNICEF
VSO
WaterAid
WWF

Here's a list of their seminars, and their purpose as far as the BBC is involved.

The seminars so far
2004
The first seminar took place in London, on Thursday May 20, 2004 and the second in Cambridge, on September 16 and 17, 2004. Each event was attended by 20 senior BBC executives, including the Director of Television, the Channel Controllers for BBC1, 2 and 4, the Heads of Drama, Documentaries, Specialist Factual, Learning, Children’s, News, Current Affairs and Sport. 20 developing world experts also attended. They
included academics, film makers, writers, grassroots activists, representatives from UK based NGOs (including Barbara Stocking, the Chief Executive of Oxfam), Government Ministers and business leaders. The Kew meeting was addressed by Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State at the Department for International Development. Delegates traveled to
the two seminars from a number of countries including Pakistan, South Africa, Mexico and Haiti.

2005
The first brainstorm of 2005 took place on July 14-15 at New Hall College, Cambridge. It was our most successful to date. We continued to have high level participation from the BBC - including the Director of Television, Jana Bennett, and three channel controllers – from BBC2, 3 and 4. Interestingly, we also had representatives from drama, comedy, features and factual entertainment. For the first time, several independent producers were
also present. On the non broadcasting side, there were grassroots activists from India, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Antigua. When she opened the seminar, Jana Bennett acknowledged that the Real World Brainstorms had had a significant impact on the BBC’s thinking and programming. She said the ambitious season Africa Lives on the BBC would not have been the same without this dialogue.

2006
A one day event was held in London on January 26 2006, focusing on climate change and its impact on development. The brainstorm brought together 28 BBC executives and independent producers, this time including several from BBC News, and 28 policy experts. It was chaired by Fergal Keane and looked ahead to the next 10 years, to explore the challenges facing television in covering this issue. Several delegates attended from
developing countries, including Ethiopia, China and Bangladesh.
On September 14 and 15 2006, another one and a half day event took place at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge. The theme was ‘interconnectedness’ and there was also a particular focus on Latin America. Many of the BBC participants were drama and comedy producers, directors and writers. One of the aims of the seminars has been to persuade non factual programme makers to introduce international themes and stories into their programmes. As a result of the Kew seminar, the BBC commissioned Howard Brenton to write a drama on contemporary China. It is now recognised that drama, comedy and entertainment offer ways of reaching new and wider audiences. One of the most popular programmes in the BBC’s Africa season was the Richard Curtis drama Girl
in the Café which was produced by Hilary Bevan-Jones who attended our New Hall seminar.

2007
A one and a half day event was held on July 12 and 13 at New Hall College, Cambridge entitled ‘Telling stories about an interconnected world: the challenge to broadcasting.’
There were four ‘carousel’ sessions with a wide range of experts, who all approached the theme of an interconnected world from different angles. Some of the specific issues explored included innovation, design, migration, generational differences and the role of global business. This was a very successful event. The BBC’s upcoming India and Pakistan 07 season was highlighted and broadcasters found the interconnections theme challenged them to rethink the nature of their work. The specialists appreciated the opportunity for a deeper insight into media decision making.

There was recognition of the need to acknowledge some of the complexities and contradictions in communicating global stories. Roly Keating, the Controller of BBC2 took up this theme in his closing remarks ‘We’ve got to keep challenging the frames in which we put these stories because every frame – whether a news item or a classic 60 minute documentary – carries with it all sorts of inbuilt rather unexamined assumptions about the way we tell the story.’ Roly urged producers and commissioners ‘to generate more variety – shapes, tones, formats – because the liberation of coming at these subjects from a completely different spirit is so breathtaking.’

The aim
The aim of the seminars is to change minds and hearts. We want to talk about the developing world in a way that is interesting, engaging and provocative, so that the BBC participants and independent producers come away convinced that this is an area which their programmes should no longer ignore. We are not pitching ideas and have no guarantees that specific programmes will be commissioned on these issues. Our goal,
therefore, is to bring to life stories and issues from the developing world. We shall not be talking in detail about tv coverage so we do not need participants to have a detailed knowledge of British television. Themes
The seminars started with an overall theme: change and its impact on people’s lives in the west and in the developing world. We wanted to demonstrate that the lives of people in the developing world are not static- as they are sometimes portrayed on television. We looked at the effects of global environmental, technological and economic changes and
exploring issues like urbanisation, deforestation, access to education, running water healthcare, trade rules, HIV/Aids and mental health. More recently, we have focused increasingly on the theme of interconnectedness.

Participants
At each of the seminars there are approximately 40 participants, half from the BBC, and the remainder covering a wider range of voices with an interest in, and knowledge about the developing world.

Plans for 2008
There will be a one a half day brainstorm in Cambridge in July 2008. The specific focus has yet to be agreed but one of the aims will be to invite producers and writers, in addition to BBC executives and independent producers. It will also provide an opportunity to see how well the BBC is doing in fulfilling its new purpose of ‘bringing the world to the UK’. How far is it succeeding in reaching new audiences?
We’re also keen that the next event should deepen representation from the CIS and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.

[Teddy Bear]

Just one example, when I read this, from the Muslim Aid website, I felt like I was reading a BBC article on the subject.

These member groups and seminars might explain quite a bit about BBC reporting, and why they wanted to conceal the extent of their affiliation with them. I will definitely be investigating this further. As appears to be the case, these vested interests manage to get their slant reported as news, without any or little attempt to balance or provide any other viewpoint to explain what is being reported.
Directly in contravention of the BBC Charter.

[Teddy Bear]

Looking through some of the IBT members websites I am first struck at how many have to do with providing aid in various 3rd world countries, and for various claims. Nearly all of them feature a picture of poverty in an African, Middle Eastern or Asian setting.

Since I am most familiar with the goings on in the Middle East, I look at some of those agencies with connection here, just to see what they are trying to create within and elicit from the reader.

Islamic Relief - Palestine
- 60% of the population live on less than $2 a day

- Nearly 50% of Palestinians suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

- In the last 2 years the numbers of poor have tripled, to around 2 million.

-50% of the population rely on food aid for survival.

The humanitarian crisis in Palestine is deepening. In recent years, thousands of Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands injured - including many children. Palestinian homes, farmlands and businesses have been destroyed by bulldozers and tanks. Curfews and travel restrictions have resulted in an unemployment rate of over 60%. Without jobs families have no income, and they are left to struggle with crippling poverty.

The rising rates of malnutrition and anemia reflect the misery of their situation. Hundreds of thousands of people are now dependant upon food assistance.

Islamic Relief in Palestine

Islamic Relief has worked in Palestine since 1994, and opened its Gaza City office in 1998. Since then, Islamic Relief has been working to help the Palestinians with food aid, medical relief, small business loans, and orphan sponsorship. Islamic Relief has also established educational enhancement centres, care programs for psychologically traumatized children, and a school for the deaf.
Mohammed's Story
Mohammed El Attar lives in Beit Lahia, north of the Gaza Strip. He has ten children and no way to support them after his farming land was bulldozed during recent conflict.

“All my children are small. I have only one teenager, but he cannot find work. Their mouths are open. They need to eat and drink and I can no longer afford to pay for it,” Mohammed says.

“I have nothing; no work and no income,” he adds.

Islamic Relief is the first humanitarian organisation to offer Mohammed and his family help with the provision of a food pack, which will provide the family food for two weeks

Mohammed and his family are grateful to Islamic Relief for the food package they received, which Islamic Relief provides to families such as Mohammed’s to assist them and give them respite from their daily difficulties.

From the International Service Website

Breaking down walls: supporting people with disabilities to fight for equality in Palestine

Yana Zayed is our volunteer working to support staff and activists
at the General Union of Disabled Palestinians.
Here she shares with us how taking small steps to challenge inequalities and fight for the rights of people with disabilities, can begin to break down walls...

"There are two separation walls that menace Palestinian society; one is that infamous grey structure that denies every Palestinian the basic human right to live in dignity, and the other is the lesser-known invisible wall that pushes Palestinians with disabilities even further away from this right.

For the last three years, I have been working hand-in-hand with disability activists from the General Union of Disabled Palestinians (GUDP) attempting to chip away at this invisible wall and address the inequalities that exist.

The GUDP is the largest organisation working on disability rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, which is both led and run by Palestinians with disabilities. Set up in the early 1990s, it was one of the key driving forces behind the passing of the Palestinian Disability Law in 1999.

Today, the GUDP’s activists are busy lobbying for proper and effective implementation of that Law. This is no small feat considering the context in which they operate, and the low priority that is given to dealing with disabilities and the rights of disabled people. To address this, the Union must also dedicate time and resources to working on disability-awareness within Palestinian society. Like I say, no small feat.

A woman walks alongside the separation wall in Palestine
Yana walks alongside the separation wall
© Y Zayed

For my part, I have been actively involved with the GUDP’s central office and its 11 West Bank branches in awareness-raising and training events. The branches are totally dependent on the commitment of volunteers. They open their doors every day to the public so that Palestinians with disabilities and their families can come and seek advice and support. And despite the fact that disability is stigmatized - sadly, all too often I hear stories about Palestinians with disability being physically locked away from society by their families - people do come.

I quickly learnt at the beginning of my International Service placement with the GUDP that if I was to support the Union in empowering Palestinians with disabilities, my first step was to focus on the self-empowerment of the Union's activists themselves.

I remember once, at the beginning of an advocacy training course, sitting in a circle with activists and listening to stories of rejection, abuse, embarrassment and inferiority. Before long, the tears began to flow amongst the participants; myself included.

It felt like the group had taken a leap over the first hurdle before tackling the bigger wall

At the end of this course, one participant with a physical impairment told us how he always found it awkward requesting to sit in the front seat of a shared taxi when travelling. As a result of coming to the advocacy course and learning how to self-advocate, he decided he would go directly to the taxi garage manager to explain his situation:

“From that moment on, the manager always greets me when I’m at the garage and makes sure I get to sit in the front seat without causing any embarrassment or conflict.”

These may be small chips. But as long as we are breaking down walls in Palestine - not building them - then the possibility of living a dignified life is a step closer to becoming reality."

So nowhere in this narrative does any Palestinian responsibility for their woes appear. While Israel is not named, it is presented as the cause of Palestinian poverty and problems.

The wall, described in the last article in order to elicit as much sympathy from the reader, doesn't also focus on the fact that on the other side of the wall are different people who have to face other issues related to it. They didn't build it because they wanted to, but because they were more afraid of what was happening without it. But for Palestinian actions, the wall would not have been necessary, and they would still be allowed to work freely in Israel, supporting their families, and enjoying a standard of living that was the highest of all surrounding Arab lands.

In the same way these article don't mention this, neither does the BBC. It sees only one side of the wall, and doesn't question truthfully why it was built.

This paragraph is an another example The humanitarian crisis in Palestine is deepening. In recent years, thousands of Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands injured - including many children. Palestinian homes, farmlands and businesses have been destroyed by bulldozers and tanks. Curfews and travel restrictions have resulted in an unemployment rate of over 60%. Without jobs families have no income, and they are left to struggle with crippling poverty.

But who initiated the violence that led to these bulldozers and tanks? Nowhere are the Palestinians made responsible for what has subsequently happened to themselves, and this also doesn't explain how many Palestinians have become very wealthy as a result of what has happened in recent years.

Clearly these people running these sites want to get money to fund themselves and whatever projects they engage in. They need people reading their stuff not to go too deep, or think too much about why the Palestinians are in this situation.

But should the BBC be aiding them with their similar propaganda under the banner of fair and impartial?

[Teddy Bear]

The eminent Melanie Phillips has written an article on her blog examining the connection between IBT and the BBC, and believes, as do I, that this might be more damning for the BBC than the Newsnight scandal.

I'm also happy to say that she mentions our site in her article.

The real BBC scandal

The BBC has expended considerable effort, not to mention a very large amount of licence fee-payers’ money, upon suppressing evidence of its biased reporting.

In 2004, prompted by persistent concerns about anti-Israel bias, a report was written by broadcasting executive Malcolm Balen on the BBC’s Middle East coverage. The BBC has spent more than a third of a million pounds resisting legal efforts to force it to publish this report, which remains secret to this day.

In a report published in 2007, the BBC claimed that the previous year it had held a ‘high level seminar’ on climate change attended by ‘some of the best scientific experts’. As a result, said this report, the BBC had

‘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]’.

A member of the public, Tony Newbery, mounted a five year attempt under Freedom of Information law to force the BBC to divulge the names of the ‘scientific experts’ who had persuaded it into this astounding abandonment of objectivity in reporting on the issue of climate change.

The BBC spent thousands of pounds blocking Mr Newbery’s action, which finally failed last Friday, implacably refusing to make those names publicly available. Now we know why.

For an enterprising blogger, Maurizio Morabito, has uncovered the list of these 28 names through searching an internet cache on the website of the International Broadcasting Trust, which helped set up the seminar with the BBC. This list shows that in fact only a tiny number of these secret participants were actually current scientists – and all of those were climate change alarmists, including the director of the Tyndall Centre which was at the eye of the infamous ‘Climategate’ email storm. The rest of them were activists or journalists.

So the BBC censored its journalism on climate change on the basis of a seminar of climate change partisans, zealots and assorted distinctly unauthoritative others, whom it wholly misleadingly described as some of the ‘best scientific experts’. It then spent thousands of pounds of public money trying to conceal this fact on the spurious grounds -- as with the Balen report – that journalistic processes had to remain private.

This scandal, however, goes way beyond the issue of climate change. The notion that the seminar’s co-organiser, the International Broadcasting Trust, is an objective body is quite false. It is nothing other than a left-wing lobby group supported by a veritable who’s who of radical developmental and third world-activist NGOs – including Amnesty, Christian Aid, Human Rights Watch, Islamic Relief, Muslim Aid, Oxfam, Save the Children and WWF (World Wildlife Fund) -- and which openly aims to influence broadcasters to promulgate the views of such organisations. And it boasts about its successes in achieving this aim:

‘Our lobbying work has produced significant results. Both the BBC and Channel 4 now have remits which place internationalism at the heart of their output... When the new BBC Charter was first published in 2006 in draft form, there was also no mention of internationalism. As a result of lobbying by IBT the Charter was amended and one of the BBC’s key purposes now is ´to bring the world to the UK.´

Indeed, the 2006 climate change seminar wasn’t the half of it. The Biased BBC site has uncovered a number of other seminars the IBT organised and that the BBC attended between 2004 and 2008. The IBT boasted:

‘Six seminars have taken place. They have had a significant impact on the BBC’s output’,

a claim apparently upheld in 2005 by Jana Bennett, then Director of Television, who

‘acknowledged that the Real World Brainstorms had had a significant impact on the BBC’s thinking and programming. She said the ambitious season Africa Lives on the BBC would not have been the same without this dialogue’;

not to mention Roly Keating, controller of BBC 2, who at another IBT seminar about ‘global interconnectedness’ in 2007

‘urged producers and commissioners ‘to generate more variety – shapes, tones, formats – because the liberation of coming at these subjects from a completely different spirit is so breathtaking.’

Given the supporters and aims of the IBT, is it surprising therefore that so much of the BBC’s journalism sounds so much like anti-capitalist, anti-west, anti-Israel, third-world agitprop?

And given the apparent systematic breach of the BBC‘s statutory duty to impartiality that would appear to have been involved, not just in its reporting but also in its association with an outfit whose agenda is to influence broadcasting output to a radical leftist view of the world, isn’t this a scandal that is even more urgent for Parliament to investigate than the wretched Newsnight debacle?

[Teddy Bear]

Tom Chivers in The Telegraph has picked up on the discovery of the names of those attending the climate change seminar. As he appears to be a greenie, he does his best to defend the BBC. It's worth reading his article to see the tactics reflecting the mindset of his type. I'll also post under this the comments I made to him, and those made to me.

I won't put in the links he placed in his article, anybody wanting them can go to his article.

The BBC isn't 'balanced' in its reporting of climate change: but the facts aren't 'balanced' either
By Tom Chivers

Round or flat? What do YOU think, Professor of Astronomy? And you, Urine-Stained Alcoholic?
A new scandal is enveloping the BBC. It has been revealed that they have taken an editorial decision not to give equal air time to two sides of a debate.

Some scientists believe that the dodo is extinct, and their views are valuable. But should we not teach the controversy? What about the counter-argument: that dodos are not extinct, but in fact left Mauritius on a spaceship in 1685 and built the Martian canals? The BBC is peddling the "dodo extinct" theory, but it should be made clear that it is only one theory. We should teach the controversy. Of course, the archaeologists, zoologists and historians who claim that they are dead have their opinion. But the opinion of Mad Clive, the guy who shouts at the pigeons on Buckingham Palace Road, is just as valid. Surely our media, our national broadcaster no less, should be balanced in its reporting? The BBC might also want to reconsider its leadenly one-sided coverage of the "do leprechauns exist?" argument.

"Balance" in reporting is, at best, a useful thing to aim for, and at worst an actively harmful fiction. It's a fig-leaf of objectivity: it is true that person A made comment X, and person B made comment Y. That can be useful, occasionally, where there is a genuine divide in opinion between well-informed groups. A Government minister and his shadow might reasonably disagree on state provision of a service, or on a moral point about crime or punishment. But in the climate debate, as portrayed in the media, there is no such divide. It's not quite Mad Clive versus the archaeologists, but it's not so far off.

Yesterday, Guido Fawkes, the entertainingly scurrilous Tory gossip blog, published a piece [edit: the original scoop was by Maurizio Morabito on the Omnilogos blog] about a seminar that the BBC held in 2006 to decide the Corporation's editorial policy on climate change. Apparently the Beeb had refused to respond to a FOI request to reveal the names of the people present, but someone has since got hold of them. Guido describes them as "Scientists, 'scientists' and hippy campaigners", adding sternly "but what the Beeb will be most embarrassed by is the representative from the disgraced Climatic Research Unit who were exposed three years later for manipulating data to fit their arguments."

Well, "exposed" and "disgraced" is one way of putting it: "exonerated of any wrongdoing in eight (8) separate independent enquiries, from a Commons select committee to Pennsylvania State University" might be another. But Guido's point, presumably, is that the BBC should have included, for balance, some people who do not think that man-made climate change is happening.

There are people who don't think that a) mankind's actions are increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that b) the world has got warmer in recent decades and that c) that increase in concentration is behind a significant amount of that warming. But very few of them work in climate science departments. Running their opinion as a "balance" to the work of serious scientists in the field would be like getting Trofim Lysenko in as a counterweight on Farming Today.

That's not to say there are no arguments to be had about the climate: serious arguments to which we should dedicate time and thought. There is huge uncertainty over how fast, how severe and how dangerous climate change is. There are serious people who think we shouldn't work to slow carbon emissions, because the rapid growth in living standards in the developing world is driven by cheap energy; instead, we should rely on human ingenuity and the free market to find ways of dealing with the changing world as it arrives.

Similarly, there are serious people who think that geoengineering is a good idea; others who think it's too dangerous. There are people who think nuclear power can rescue the situation, and people who think it'll take too long to build enough power plants. There are people, notably Richard Lindzen, who think people have overestimated the sensitivity of the climate to carbon emissions, and think we can survive many times higher concentration than is currently suggested. There are advocates of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade. These are important arguments, that need to be had in public, loudly and passionately. These are the sort of balanced debates I would like to see in the media, between intelligent, informed people.

But saying the BBC shouldn't have a man from one of the UK's leading climate research units because, three years later, it would be involved in a media scandal and then exonerated of wrongdoing is just silly. The BBC's list also has a representative of the energy firm NPower, a consultant to the insurance industry, the former UK Chief Scientist Lord May, Richard D North of the Institute of Economic Affairs (who has accused the BBC of "bigging up [climate] alarmism") and representatives of Harvard University, Cambridge University, Oxford University, the Niels Bohr Institute, Plymouth Marine Labs and the US Embassy. "Hippies and 'scientists'" these are not, even if there are also five people (out of 30) from environmental charities. Who should they have got in instead?

"Balance" in reporting, if it means anything at all, certainly does not mean "find someone who disagrees with this guy and stick them on the next chair". Nick Davies, the journalist and journalism lecturer, says to students that, if they are reporting what the weather is, their job is not to find one person who says it's raining and one person to says it's sunny: their job is to look out of the window. That's not balanced, but sometimes – usually – the facts aren't balanced either.

My first comment:

What a facetious, arrogant, ignorant load of tripe!
Chivers asserts that the argument for 'climate change', or global warming as it used to be called until it was found some places were getting cooler, is as one sided as the fact of the extinction of the dodo.

His 'proof' is that since we are putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it has to have an effect, and if he's told the result is global warming, global cooling, climate change, or whatever else will be the flavour of the day that sustains these retards, it must be true - end of debate.

So perhaps he can explain just how this planet has gone through many changes in its history, long before human activity could be considered a factor?
Or when ice caps melt here, they can be seen to be melting on Mars as well?
And everybody knows Martians are green. must be the dodos sent there from Mauritius

What we see is that instead of opening the debate and looking at the real factors that affect our planet - ALL OF THEM, they seek to shove everything into convenient basket that
1) Makes a lot of profit for interested parties.
2) Makes proponents appear to be caring and considerate for the future of the planet.
3) Make themselves feel intelligent, especially knowing the national 'fair and impartial' broadcaster will back them up.

I think Chivers is in the 3rd category. Therefore he must do his best to stifle any argument to his claim

Does solar activity play a part in your calculations - you know the thing not affected by human activity?
Of course not - I wonder why!

Replies to this

fellhopper reply to me
1 hour ago
Is it not conceivable that both man and nature may be factors in climate change? And could it be that they are working in opposite directions? The real question to answer is wether global temperatures are warmer (or cooler) than they would otherwise be without man's activity. Evidence suggests the answer is yes as there is a strong link between atmospheric CO2 and global temperatures. However manmade CO2 is only one factor of many that contributes to climate change. We will have a problem when the world enters a warming phase and human CO2 emissions exacerbate the natural trend.

Teddy123Bear reply to fellhopper
1 hour ago
When the greenies start considering the questions in the same way you have phrased them fellhopper, that will make me a lot happier. There are still factors way beyond human activity that affect climate to a great extent.
I dislike being taken for a mug by swindlers, and that's what I see has happened with this subject.

ChilliKwok reply to fellhopper
1 hour ago
Evidence of a strong link you say? What evidence? The ice core records show temperatures *lead* CO2 by 800 years. Atmospheric CO2 has increased by 7% since 2000 but temperatures have remained static. Geology tells us the Earth has already been through many natural temperature fluctuations - including the recent medieval warm period and little ice age - all without MM CO2. So where's this evidence you speak of? Some daft model that can't predict the weather next week never mind in 50 years time? Pull the other one: You're a watermellon. If it wasn't the bogus climate change scare you'd be advocating massive taxes and regulations for some other trumped up reason.

fellhopper reply to Chilliwok
1 hour ago
I prefer to believe science as opposed to rants on DT comments pages

Teddy123Bear reply to fellhopper
53 minutes ago
Looks to me like 'science' is what ChilliKwok was giving you. What you mean is you only what the opinions that support what you want to believe in defiance of real science that looks at everything involved.
That's understandable given your mindset, but I'm disappointed in you.

Then my other comment to the article:

Chivers is so quick to defend the BBC for their support of an issue which makes him , and those like him, feel intelligent, he's neglected to focus on the main issues.

1. The BBC were quite happy to spend any amount of licence fee money to stifle the information that was requested - claiming 'journalistic reasons'. You know the similar excuse to pull the Savile Newsnight report, or not publish the Balen report. Despite this, a blogger was able to find this information, freely available, by just knowing where to look. Something one would think professionals would know - but then we're talking about the BBC - Those who get paid whatever, even if they don't know what they are doing.

2. The IBT website which ran this and quite a few other seminars, boasts openly about their ability to influence media output, especially that of the BBC, in support of their members. Lobbying is a heading on their website, it's what they do, and they're proud of it.

3. Anyone looking up the various members supporting IBT will see a particular thread in each of the various areas in which they have an agenda. One can also see how BBC reporting is greatly biased in reporting issues surrounding these areas in much the same direction, supporting these agendas.

More than climate change issues, this is in all probability what the BBC didn't want to be made public by revealing their complicity with IBT. The BBC has no right to be in the pocket of these various members in defiance of their remit as per their Charter.

Cover-Up - that's what they have to do, and if Chivers was a real journalist, he'd have looked into this aspect.

[charmbrights]

Nov 14, 2012 20:56:22 GMT Teddy Bear said:

Tom Chivers in The Telegraph has picked up on the discovery of the names of those attending the climate change seminar. As he appears to be a greenie, he does his best to defend the BBC. It's worth reading his article to see the tactics reflecting the mindset of his type. ...

What has been missed in this discussion, and the other one on this board is that the "respected academics" from, I agree, major institutions is that they all had grants to study "climate change" and therefore had as much of a vested interest in exaggerating it as the likes of Greenpeace.

[Teddy Bear]

It was one of the key points made by Maurizio in the post I inserted from him, as well as the next one by James Delingpole. They also link to many other bloggers who have also made this valid point.

There are so many facets that expose a downright sinister behaviour by the BBC to be gleaned from this. It's the 'gift' that keeps on giving

[Teddy Bear]

Melanie Phillips updates her article, a few posts above, which also now appears at the Daily Mail
with this:

Update: I put the main points above to the BBC, and this is what they told me in response:

'There has been no censoring of climate change reporting. We have attempted to report proportionately. Indeed The BBC Trust’s science review of last year praised our coverage. The event certain bloggers have referred to was one in a series of seminars for BBC editors and managers. They were a forum for free and frank discussion of global issues and not created to produce programming nor set story direction. They involved external contributors from business, science and academia. Seminars such as this do not set editorial policy. They can over time and along with many other elements help inform our journalism through debate and access to expertise, but the setting of our editorial policies is a formal process involving BBC Boards and the BBC Trust.

'The BBC has refused disclosure on the basis that the documents were held for the purposes of journalism, art or literature, and are therefore outside the scope of the BBC’s designation under FOI Act. The Information Tribunal has unanimously upheld this. The seminar was conducted under the Chatham House Rule to enable free and frank discussion, something that is necessary for our independent journalism.

'IBT were one of a range of organisations and different voices the BBC worked with in delivering these seminars. They are no longer involved. The events were considered against our editorial guidelines and raised no issues about impartiality for the BBC or its output.'