A damning indictment of BBC climate reporting alleging 20 years of endemic bias and the production of fake news, has been presented to the Government’s mid-term Charter review of the Corporation. Published by the Net Zero Watch and written by the long-time BBC observer Paul Homewood, it suggests that all the factual errors detailed in its submission “could easily have been avoided with a bit of basic research”. Citizen journalist Homewood doesn’t pull any punches: “This is journalism at its shoddy worst.”
It is argued that the “rot” set in after a seminar in 2006 – a meeting the BBC fought for many years to keep secret – shaped climate coverage. The seminar was attended by many green activists such as Greenpeace. “Since then, it has been the norm for BBC reports on climate change and energy policy to exclude or marginalise anybody who does not agree with the consensus view, while giving undue prominence to extreme green activist groups such as Greenpeace and WWF,” writes Homewood.
In a passage detailing how the BBC “neutralises” complaints, Homewood explains that the ‘scientists say’ defence is employed – the BBC is not broadcasting its own view, “merely relating what others are saying”. Homewood has pressed many cases against the BBC over the last decade, and had some success. No doubt from bitter experience, he relates what he calls the BBC’s most common defence, namely, ”simply to ignore the complaint, in the hope it will go away”.
In Homewood’s view, the most egregious example of this concerned Sir David Attenborough’s 2019 televised documentary “Climate Change – The Facts”. It made several highly questionable assertions that storms, floods, heatwaves and sea level rises are all rapidly getting worse as a result of climate change, none of which are backed by the IPCC. A complaint to the effect that there was no scientific evidence behind Attenborough’s claims, “was simply wafted away on the basis that some scientists disagreed with the official line”.
Read More: Damning Report Into BBC’s “Shoddy” Climate and Net Zero Reporting