Heated row over cooling article - April 08, 2008
The BBC is facing allegations that it altered a news story about climate at the behest of an activist.
A series of emails from BBC reporter Roger Harrabin and activist Jo Abbess were posted on the Campaign Against Climate Change website on April 4th.
After a series of back and forths Harrabin writes “Have a look in 10 minutes and tell me you are happier. ... We have changed headline and more”.
The original headline - Global Warming ‘dips this year’ – changed to the current Global Temperatures ‘to decrease’. Needless to say as soon as these emails were noticed they were picked up by unhappy sceptic bloggers (here, here and here for example).
The BBC told us:
A minor change was made to the "Global temperatures 'to decrease'" piece on our website to better reflect the science. A few people including the report's authors, the world meteorlogical organisation, pointed out to us that the earlier version had been ambiguous.
It would be better if you did not quote the sceptics. Their voice is heard everywhere, on every channel. They are deliberately obstructing the emergence of the truth.And also:
I am about to send your comments to others for their contribution, unless you request I do not. They are likely to want to post your comments on forums/fora, so please indicate if you do not want this to happen. You may appear in an unfavourable light because it could be said that you have had your head turned by the sceptics.The News Sniffer site highlights some changes other than the headline*. These were already annoying some sceptics even before the emails surfaced.
Making corrections to an article in response to a complaint is not necessarily wrong.
It’s certainly a bit much to string up Harrabin as a result of this exchange. I’ve certainly gone over things I’ve written and thought “I wish I’d put that differently.”
To my mind there are only two questions to be answered here.
The first of these is should the BBC have flagged the article as having been changed? The answer here is yes if they thought the original version was wrong, and no if they thought they were just altering for readability. As they think the change is minor then there isn’t really a need to flag it**.
The second question is why on earth Abbess put up the email exchange. Anyone could have predicted the response from the sceptics out there...
*| Old version [top three paragraphs] | New version |
| Global temperatures will drop slightly this year as a result of the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said. | Global temperatures for 2008 will be slightly cooler than last year as a result of the cold La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said. |
| The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer. | The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer. |
| This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory. But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend - and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years. |
But this year's temperatures would still be way above the average - and we would soon exceed the record year of 1998 because of global warming induced by greenhouse gases. |
** Here’s an extract from a blog post by a BBC editor from 2006:
When we make a major change or revision to a story we republish it with a new timestamp, indicating it’s a new version of the story. If there’s been a change to a key point in the story we will often point this out in the later version (saying something like "earlier reports had said...").But lesser changes - including minor factual errors, corrected spellings and reworded paragraphs - go through with no new timestamp because in substance the story has not actually progressed any further. This has led to accusations we are "stealth editing" - a sinister-sounding term that implies we are actively trying to hide what we are doing. We’re not. It’s just that continually updating the timestamp risks making it meaningless, and pages of notes about when and where minor revisions are made do not make for a riveting read
Comments
Interesting -- I read a post the other week on NHS blog doctor about a BBC report on cancer scanning. The report had an unnecessary (inaccurate) scarifying headline. After complaints, the BBC changed the headline but gave no indication of this fact on their site.
The NHS blog doctor post detailed how this happens a lot at the BBC (he says), so he keeps screen shots - he provided them in the case he was writing about to prove his point.
A responsible publication, whether in print or on the web, should record corrections transparently for readers.
Posted by: Maxine | April 8, 2008 12:43 PM
Maxine
If you visit Newssniffer, as linked above, you will see that this kind of "stealth edit" is run of the mill for the BBC - confirming what NHS Blog Doctor says.
You are quite right that these sort of changes should be made clearly. Nobody's bothered about fixing the punctuation - we all do that. Making changes to meaning or emphasis should be done publicly, particularly if done in response to a request by a reader.
Posted by: Bishop Hill | April 8, 2008 08:55 PM
The obvious point of contention is
the first sentence of the third
alteration. Since the El-Nino
of 1998 temperatures have slightly
decreased. If temperatures continue heading south, then the IPCC view that CO2 is the main driver of climate change becomes untenable.
I do not think that it was appropriate to omit the sentence. This is akin to treating the whole question of the causes of climate change as something more akin to religious dogma as opposed to a scientific
question.
There are very many reputable scientists who do question whether CO2 is the main driver
in recent climate shifts.
Posted by: Jim | April 11, 2008 06:48 AM