BBC Dodge A New Chance To Be Transparent Over Twenty Eight Gate

Posted on November 27, 2012 by

I have now received what I believe to be the first official response from the BBC in connection to the Twenty Eight Gate Scandal (since the names the BBC tried to withhold were found) and it seems that the BBC’s attitude is that they will try to ignore that anything has happened and carry on as normal.

Mid-way through Tony Newbery’s court case to overturn the BBC’s decision to withhold information, I read this article by Andrew Orlowski and decided to send a Freedom Of Information request of my own.

At the time it seemed apparent that the BBC would succeed in covering-up the names of people in question and since the Jimmy Savile affair was raging in October, I thought I’d enquire if Jimmy Savile was one of the participants at the secret seminar.

Of course I didn’t really think Savile had been in attendance, but at the time I sent my FOI request the very mention of Jimmy Savile seemed to have the magic effect of forcing the BBC to be open, honest and transparent in areas which they normally keep hidden from us licence fee payers.

What changed, however, was that after I submitted my FOI request, Maurizio Morabito uncovered the names of the seminar delegates. The day after Maurizio found the names in question I annotated my FOI request updating the BBC as follows:

“In order to save the licence payer money I can tell the BBC that the participants of the climate seminar in question are available on-line here: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/11/… 

It would seem that Jimmy Savile was not a participant at this seminar, either as a delegate or in the role of climate expert. Unless the BBC wish to correct this understanding?”

Today the BBC replied to my FOI request with the predictable “Please note that the information you have requested is excluded from the Act because it is held for the purposes of ‘journalism, art or literature.’” So despite the names of the seminar delegates now being freely discussed in the public domain, the BBC won’t confirm or deny that Jimmy Savile was present, let alone comment on who was present at the seminar which resulted in the BBC changing their editorial policy towards climate.

The response that I received from the BBC happened to come on the very same day that Chris Patten opined: “BBC can be smug and complacent and disastrously wrong at times, but still represents some of UK’s best qualities”

Tonight both Chris Patten and the BBC should be asking themselves if the BBC has been acting smug, complacent and disastrously wrong throughout this entire Twenty Eight Gate affair.  Does the BBC’s approach to climate reporting “represent some of the UK’s best qualities”?

Posted in Climate, FOI Request | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Looking Through The Wrong End of the Telescope with the BBC

Posted on November 19, 2012 by

In my previous post regarding the emerging Twenty Eight Gate scandal (Christopher Booker outlines the scandal here) I questioned why the opinions of such a small group of people from outside the BBC had been allowed to change the BBC’s editorial policy regarding climate change.

The issue of climate impacts almost every conceivable area of our lives, from the price of utility bills, to the policies of European government, the cost of car tax, international collaboration, farming, education syllabus, health, property development planning, energy strategy, scientific research, product innovation, regulation, wildlife, tourism, developing countries, financial investment, transport, the internet, space exploration, infant mortality rates, politics, the mining industry, airlines, disease and so on.  The list really is endless.

In fact try and think of something, anything which has absolutely zero connection to climate in at least some way. Since climate is such a far reaching subject, surely it is wrong for the BBC to have based its editorial policies, so far as the subject of climate is concerned, around the narrow range of interests of a very small group of people?

This seemingly unique editorial restriction within the BBC has in effect placed a very narrow lens through which all the BBC’s climate reporting is passed.

With this narrow restriction the BBC has given it’s audience a back-to-front telescope with which to explore the subject of climate.  Since all BBC’s reporting is forced through this narrow aperture of focus, it is surely no wonder that people feel the BBC is biased and purposefully ignoring them, if so much of what is relevant to the topic of climate is routinely ignored?

Of course as already established, the subject of climate is enormous.  It would be impossible for the BBC to cover everything that the subject of climate touches.  The best of BBC journalism, however, equips the audience with the telescope the right way around.  Open minded journalists report on events, news and issues, no matter what they might be and in these instances the BBC becomes a tool for the audience to explore the wider world.

Surely  good journalism doesn’t demand that a closed shop defines a narrow editorial policy? Surely good journalism doesn’t rely on “expert advisors” it merely requires journalists with an enthusiasm to guide their audience across the depth and breadth, good, bad and ugly of a subject they are well acquainted with?

Just this element of the scandal raises these additional questions:

  • Amongst the noise of other issues is Chris Patten aware that climate journalism within the BBC is problem for him to fix?
  • Does Chris Patten view climate journalism as a priority to repair? Given the far reaching implications of climate on everyone you’d hope he takes this issue seriously.
  • Does Chris Patten  posses sufficient steel and energy to be able turn the BBC’s journalistic telescope the right way around on the subject of climate journalism?

This whole Twenty Eight Gate episode itself poses further issues, so at the risk of being boring I will be returning to the subject at a later date.

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Twenty Eight Gate: The BBC Has A Serious Case To Answer

Posted on November 15, 2012 by

One area of the BBC’s output which has come under intense scrutiny is their reporting over  climate science.

Tom Chivers over at the Telegraph has noted that “a new scandal is enveloping the BBC“ which has rapidly become known as “Twenty Eight Gate” and refers to a court case where the BBC spent a lot of money and lawyers time blocking a Freedom Of Information request which enquired who attended a BBC seminar on 26th January 2006.

People such as Bob Willis who have raised Freedom Of Information requests querying BBC’s approach to climate journalism have been assured by the BBC “It is not the case that the BBC ‘presents man-made global warming as a proved fact’. On the contrary, the BBC does not take a stand on the issue.”

Stephanie Harris from the BBC goes on to outline “I’d like to explain the context underpinning the application of our editorial guidelines in the climate change debate. Notwithstanding the so-called ‘climategate’ affair, the biggest peer-reviewed process in history, the IPCC, concluded with certainty of more than 90% that climate change was primarily driven by humans. This informs our coverage.  Indeed, on 18 June 2007 the BBC published a report on safeguarding its impartiality in the 21st century. It was the result of a project first commissioned by the BBC Board of Governors in conjunction with BBC management in November 2005 to identify the challenges and risks to impartiality. The report has been endorsed by the BBC Trust, the BBC Executive Board and the BBC Journalism Board.”

The bone of contention for the “Twenty Eight Gate” scandal is that when responding to Freedom Of Information requests of this nature the BBC refers to an important “high-level seminar”.  Indeed Stephanie Harris in her response to Bob Willis says

“Below is an excerpt from the section of the report relating to coverage of the climate change debate: ‘The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus. But these dissenters (or even sceptics) will still be heard, as they should, because it is not the BBC’s role to close down this debate. Acceptance of a basic scientific consensus only sharpens the need for hawk-eyed scrutiny of the arguments surrounding both causation and solution.”

People were curious who these “best scientific experts” were and whom the BBC relied on to form it’s editorial policy and blogger Tony Newberry asked a Freedom Of Information Request to find out.  The BBC resisted publication of the names, Tony Newberry appealed and ultimately the release of the names of the experts was blocked in the courts after a legal fight.

However, the story has now grown to become a scandal and christened “Twenty Eight Gate” this week after blogger Maurizio Morabito uncovered the names of the experts from an unexpected source.

With the scandal now out in the open, recently departed “ex-BBC environment hack” Richard Black has taken to Twitter to state of the seminar “The BBC’s stance was not based on these meetings – that meme is pure bull”.  All of which leaves the BBC with a lot of questions to answer:

  • Given climate issues touch almost every walk of life, why should a small group of people have such influence over BBC’s editorial climate policy?  Why does the BBC not retain an open and impartial mind and report on climate issues and news as they arise?
  • If Richard Black is correct that the BBC’s stance was not based on meetings such as the seminar, then why do official BBC FOI responses state that they were?
  • If the BBC’s stance was not based on meetings such as the seminar, then what is it based on?
  • How did the BBC choose the “best scientific experts” and why are they qualified to inform a change to the BBC’s editorial policy?
  • Why did the BBC seek to block the names of the experts whom they had relied on to change their editorial policy?

It seems that in the wake of other journalistic crises which have recently hit the BBC, that Chris Patten must now also add a specific investigation into the BBC’s climate journalism to his list of priorities.

This scandal raises many other questions and I shall be returning to these in subsequent blog posts.

Posted in Climate, FOI Request | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

BBC’s External Spend With Political Parties

Posted on October 3, 2012 by

I recently raised a Freedom of Information request to enquire how much money the BBC spends directly with political parties:

“Could you please provide a breakdown of the amount, by political party, for the total amount of money the BBC has spent with all registered political parties in United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, during the last 10 years?”

It turns out that the BBC spends money directly with political parties to pay for items such as these:

  • Space at conference exhibitions for a BBC stand to promote its output (which doubles up as broadcast space)
  • Room hire
  • Travelling with the leaders campaign during a general election
  • Plus fees for late conference accreditation (I’m assuming this means late booking charges, for what otherwise would be free conference passes)

Given the funding of political parties is a sensitive issue, I think it is something that the BBC should pay particular duty of care towards, in order to understand and mitigate the potential impacts of its external spend.  I have received the following data regarding BBC spend directly with political parties over the last 10 years:

  • Labour £335K
  • Liberal Democrats £295K
  • Conservative Party £96K

The BBC’s response goes on to clarify that the Conservative Party routinely contract out the management of their conference to a 3rd party supplier and that the effort to identify the true spend with the Conservative Party would exceed more than two and a half days work.  Given the effort involved to undertake a manual review of each vendor within the finance systems the BBC are “allowed to refuse” under FOI rules to continue this exploration further.

The larger political parties generate a lot of publicity and funding in their own right, so in my original FOI request I also queried how much the BBC spends with smaller parties such as UKIP and regional parties such as Plaid Cymru and SNP.

The BBC has not provided any evidence as yet of their spending with smaller or regional parties.

I’d suggest that as an impartial broadcaster the BBC has to be seen to be very careful regarding their spend with political parties, since the sums they spend with large parties could be seen as helping to maintain the political status-quo and handicap smaller or regional parties.

Since the BBC comes under fire from both large and small political parties with respect issues of bias, the BBC should ensure that it is squeaky clean and that its external spend could not be accused of influencing the political process in any way.  The BBC should not put itself in a position where it could be accused of funding preferred parties. 

Surely the BBC should now spend the necessary time and money to understand exactly how much it spends with all political parties, whether via contractors or direct and with the small parties too.  This is necessary for the BBC to ensure that it is financially impartial.  This data should then be published.

If it turns out that small and regional parties are handicapped by both BBC spend as well as their limited exposure on broadcast airtime, then maybe it is time to end all BBC spending with political parties.  Surely the oxygen of broadcast publicity for political parties is sufficient and zero payment from the BBC should be given to any party?

Posted in FOI Request | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Solving BBC Bias – A Starting Point

Posted on August 15, 2012 by

Inspired by Dan Hannan’s suggestion that the BBC takes the issue of correcting bias seriously, I thought I’d make a start.

In the past I tried to bash the BBC.  From now on I’ll  be constructive only and I’ll be interested to see if this has a better effect.

So what should the starting point be?  Facts I think.  A couple of years ago I submitted an FOI request and the BBC provided me with data showing where they spent money externally on recruitment.  They responded with a wealth of data for the years 2007, 2008 and 2009.

It seems reasonable to find out if anything has changed in the intervening years, so today I requested the BBC update this data for 2010 and 2011.

Since one of the central accusations of BBC bias is that the employees are biased and are unable filter their own views from BBC output, it also seemed sensible to figure out under the covers who is running the show.

So this is a start.  We’ll see what happens.

P.S. Please contact me at solvebbcbias@gmail.com if you wish to highlight anything constructive that you or others are doing to solve BBC bias.

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