BBC see "climate change" as too hot to handle

As part of "Martin Durkin" watch we bring you news that the BBC has decided to drop plans for a one day special on global warming. They even had Ricky Gervais and Jonathan Ross lined up to present.

The reason? The BBC do not want to be seen as "soft greenies" or too far to the left of centre. This is a shame and green groups are rightly upset with this move.

The Independent newspaper (the greenest of all broadsheets) devotes the first 3 pages to this story.

Global warming: Too hot to handle for the BBC

The transformation of climate change from a scientific to a political issue became clear last night when the BBC dropped plans for a day-long TV special on global warming.

The scrapping of Planet Relief, an awareness-raising broadcast similar in concept to programmes such as the poverty-focused Comic Relief and Live8, and planned for early next year, marked a watershed moment: it showed that opining about climate change is now as significant in Britain as scientific fact.

The main criticism?

Speaking at the Edinburgh International Television Festival this month, Newsnight's editor, Peter Barron said: "It's abso- lutely not the BBC's job to save the planet." The head of television news, Peter Horrocks, wrote in the BBC News website editor's blog: "It is not the BBC's job to lead opinion or proselytise on this or any other subject."

Importantly as part of Durkin watch we have:

Lessons to be learnt from Channel 4 blunder

Which WAS a major blunder (even if it helped our visitor count no end). I have included details of another famous Channel 4 blunder for those that may have forgotten.

One of the most controversial programmes on the subject was transmitted by Channel 4 last March, and, littered with major errors and half-truths, it was one of the finest examples of how not to make a television documentary. The Great Global Warming Swindle suggested the public had been duped by scientists prepared to lie for the sake of gaining either fame or research funds and contained a string of mistakes, some of which have now been accepted by the programme's makers. The scientific accuracy of the film and how its makers treated the interviewees is also the subject of an Ofcom inquiry.

Channel 4 attempted to justify the programme's transmission on the grounds it had already given large amounts of air time to presenting the orthodox views of the scientific establishment on the issue. It was time, it said, to present the views of the heterodox community.

The argument sounded remarkably similar to the Channel 4 position in the early 1990s when it decided to transmit a series of documentaries claiming HIV was not the cause of Aids, and that the Aids epidemic in Africa was a myth put about by aid agencies in need of money.

Other posts of interest:

Martin Durkin to Climate Change Scientists: "You're a big daft c**k"

The Great Global Warming Swindle: The Fightback

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Debunking "The Great Global Warming Swindle"

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