The BBC on climate sceptics
There’s an interesting post on the BBC’s ‘The Editors’ blog today on how the BBC, as a media organisation, should deal with communicating climate change and, in particular, how it should represent “climate sceptics”.
The publicly funded corporation came under fire in September when it cancelled plans to air a Comic-relief style show aimed at raising public awareness of global warming amid concerns that it would breach the corporation's guidelines on impartiality.
The blog post by Steve Herrmann briefly describes the efforts of Richard Black, the BBC’s online environment correspondent, to better understand what “climate sceptics” think and the arguments they use to try to debunk anthropogenic global warming.
It includes a more detailed piece written by Black and Roger Harrabin, BBC News’ environmental analyst, for their in-house magazine Ariel, outlining their views on what the BBC must do to “get it right on climate”.
Black and Harrabin write:
Given the weight of opinion building up around the IPCC it makes sense for us to focus our coverage on the consensus that climate change is happening, is serious, but is manageable if tackled urgently.We do not need consistently to ‘balance’ the reports of the IPCC. When we broadcast outlying views we should make sure we do not over represent them and we should keep a rough balance of views from either side of the IPCC. If we do not, we will distort the issue and risk misleading or confusing our audience.
We must also be more savvy about the way we treat outlying views – and we should make it clear to our audience when an interviewee holds a minority position.
They also say that vociferous views expressed on blogs etc need to be interpreted with caution...it's worth a read.
Olive Heffernan
Comments
Here's my answer (and a challenge) to Richard Black: "Why is the BBC Biased Against Climate Change Sceptics?"
I ask Mr Black to explain how can the "sceptics community" be treated as a single bloc; why does he lament the lack of evidence of anti-sceptics bias only to dismiss the biggest proof of them all; and then if he's aware of the fact that the BBC itself does not endorse Michael Mann's Hockey Stick graph any longer.
I ask also Mr Black to indicate where on the BBC news site there is any page showing strong evidence for climate change, and not the usual tenths of degrees, centimeters of melting and millimeters of sea rise.
If I get a reply I'll keep you posted
Posted by: Maurizio Morabito | November 16, 2007 11:41 PM
people are just not convinced…
see the ‘most recommended’ on feedback comments at the bbc site on the latest ipcc report….
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/ nol/ thread.jspa?sortBy=2&forumID=3830&edition=2&ttl=20071117021631&#paginator
Posted by: paul | November 17, 2007 02:29 AM