In February 2007, an article that Jeremy Paxman had originally written for Ariel, the BBC’s house magazine, was published on the Newsnight website. It included this remarkable statement about global warming:
I have neither the learning nor the experience to know whether the doomsayers are right about the human causes of climate change. But I am willing to acknowledge that people who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that it is the consequence of our own behaviour.
I assume that this is why the BBC’s coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago. But it strikes me as very odd indeed that an organisation which affects such a high moral tone cannot be more environmentally responsible. [My emphasis]
Jeremy Paxman, Newsnight Homepage 02/02/2007
This stark admission of partisan reporting by the BBC – coming from someone who has been at the centre of current affairs broadcasting for decades – was a surprise to me, not because I was unaware of bias on this subject, but because someone so highly placed in the organisation was prepared to make such a frank admission.
In June of the same year, the BBC published an 80-page report with the astonishingly obscure title, From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel. Now there may be quite a few people who are concerned about the odd wheel coming off our national broadcaster’s wagon, but why would they be talking about see-saws? A subtitle on the cover of the report sheds some light on this mystery, but not much: safeguarding impartiality in the 21st century’. The connection between this relatively straightforward expression of intent, wagon wheels, and seasaws is explained in excruciating detail in the early pages of the report, but thankfully it is not the subject of this post.
In fact, once one has got past the silly title, the report is very interesting, even courageous in its attempt to confront a difficult problem. This seems to be a genuine attempt to address concerns that editorial policy at the BBC too often reflects the views of its young, metropolitan, university educated, middle class, mildly left of centre employees, rather than the full spectrum of public opinion. This problem is not just the preserve of people who sign letters of complaint, ‘disgusted, Tonbridge Wells’ but as the report makes clear, it is also causing alarm among senior staff within the organisation.
Not surprisingly, I thumbed through From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel to see if it included any attempt to justify the blatantly partisan line that the BBC takes in the climate change debate. I was not disappointed.
Skilfully dovetailed into a section that also considers the problems of reporting Holocaust denial impartially, I found a few paragraphs dealing with what the Corporation obviously considers to be an equally tedious and morally reprehensible group: climate change sceptics. Immediately it became clear why Jeremy Paxman had felt able to be so forthright about editorial policy on the climate change debate in his article. This is what the report says:
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 [on anthropogenic climate change].
From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel, Page 40
That sentence worried me. Years of watching the BBC’s coverage of this subject – with growing astonishment – during which numerous ‘scientific experts’ who clearly hold very partisan views on climate change, have been interviewed to provide viewers with what they were lead to believe were objective opinions on the evidence for anthropogenic global warming, has made me despair of BBC impartiality. I am thinking of people like George Monbiot, Mark Lynas, Professor Chris Rapley, Lord May of Oxford, Sir David King and Professor Tom Burke in particular. Anyone who has followed this controversy will be well aware that, although such people may be experts on the subject, they are anything but impartial or objective.
In an attempt to discover whether the BBC had organised this seminar in order to acquaint itself with the issues, or whether the purpose had been to obtain some kind of spurious authority for an editorial policy that had long since become ingrained in their news coverage, I thought that it would be worth trying to find out who had been invited to advise them. Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act and the Environmental Information Regulations I made the following request to the BBC for information:
1. What was the name or title given to this seminar?
2. Where and when was this seminar held?
3. When did the seminar start and when did it end.
4. A copy of the invitation that was sent to prospective participants.
5. The agenda for the seminar together with any notes that were provided for the participants.
6. The names of all those who were invited to attend the seminar as participants, observers or in any other capacity together with their job description, organizational affiliation’s or any other information relating to their eligibility for being invited to be present.
7. The names of all those who attended the seminar as participants, observers or in any other capacity together with their job description, organizational affiliation’s or any other information relating to their eligibility for being invited to be present.
8. Any minutes, notes, electronic communications, recorded material or other records of the proceedings of the seminar.
Letter to the BBC, 20th July, 2007
Eventually I received their response:
In this case, the information you have requested is outside the scope of the Act because information relating to the seminar is held to help inform the arc’s editorial policy around reporting climate change. The only exception to this is the logistic details which you have requested
In this respect I can confirm that the seminar was called ‘Climate Change – the Challenge to Broadcasting’ and was held at the BBC’s Television Centre in White City London on 26 January 2006. The seminar ran from 9.30am to 5.30prn.
We are also happy to voluntarily provide you with some further information relating to the seminar.
The attendees at the seminar were made up of 30 key BBC staff and 30 invited guests who are specialists in the area of climate change. It was hosted by Jana Bennett, Director of Vision (then Television), BBC and Helen Boaden, Director of News BBC. It was chaired by Fergal Keane, Special Correspondent with BBC News. The key speaker at the seminar was Robert McCredie, Lord May of Oxford.
Seminar had the following aims:
- · To offer a clear summary of the state of knowledge on the issue
- · To find where the main debates lie
- · To invoke imagination to allow the media to deal with the scope of the issue
- · To consider the BBC’s role in public debate.
Letter from the BBC, 21st August, 2007
So we know that Lord May, an ex-government chief scientific adviser, ex-president of the Royal Society and a vehement advocate of climate alarmism played an important role in the proceedings. But apparently the BBC would prefer that just about everything else to do with a seminar which formed their editorial policy on a matter of immense public importance should remain a secret.
There may be people outside the realms of the BBC and environmental activism who would attempt to justify this decision, but I doubt if there are many.
As the BBC does not offer any internal review procedure when a request under the
Freedom of Information Act is refused, I referred my application to the Information Commissioner’s Office for adjudication. After a delay of almost a year, they are just beginning to investigate. Future developments will be reported on this blog.
108 Responses to “Jeremy Paxman, the BBC, Impartiality, and Freedom of Information”
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Tony, the next few lines in the BBC report are interesting:
Which, when put with the bit you quoted, seems to be the BBC both saying it is and isn’t giving voice to those opposed to the consensus.
If it’s worrying at all, it’s that the document seems to be written by one of those ‘university educated, middle class, mildly left of centre employees’ (oops, just described myself) who do skew the BBC output, which I feel is the major problem with it (the document and the channel)–it’s iconoclastic to the extreme, to be read by a rather small circle. Mind you, I’m a big Test Match Special fan, and so I got the wagon wheel straight away.
The section comes under Guiding Principle 4: “Impartiality is about breadth of view, and can be breached by omission. It is not necessarily to be found on the centre ground.”
I agree, it probably is a genuine attempt to support impartiality, but needs cutting to the chase.
[…] at Harmless Sky has been following , for 18 months at least, development of BBC policy on the coverage of climate […]
PS just blogged on this with some info from a paper published in 2005 that might be useful.
I wrote to the IBT and asked for a list of attendees at the BBC seminar, but they’re not playing ball either.
Re: #29 Bishop Hill
Many thanks for passing that on. Did the IBT give reasons and is there any chance that you might post the correspondence either at your place or here?
Re: 26, Alex
The passage that you quoted from the BBC impartiality report is likely to be the subject of a post here soon, but lets just look at the last sentence for now:
All I am asking is that the hawk-eyed ones at the BBC reveal who they are relying on for expert advice.
I would be very interested to know whether you think that they should provide the information I have requested or not.
Hi Tony, yes I do agree they should provide the information, but it’s not likely, as it was most likely under Chatham House Rules.
This bit of info comes from the Joe Smith article I referenced (p.1472 of the journal Risk Analysis 25:6, 2005) over on my post. It only covers the seminars from 1997-2004, but I would imagine it extends and covers those later seminars.
Alex,
Of course BBC only needs to provide me with the text of the invitation to participate in the seminar for us to know whether Chatham House Rules applied, rather than just speculating about it. And why would they feel the need to offer their ‘best scientific experts’ on climate change this kind of protection anyway?
Tony
Chatham House it was, apparently at the request of the BBC. I now have FoI requests in at the MetOffice, DEFRA and UEA to see if they will tell me who attended. There may be others to try as well – any suggestions are welcomed.
Bishop Hill.
Have you also asked for copies of all correspondence, including emails, received form the BBC about the seminar? Also all relevant internal communications that refer to it?
Incidentally, congratulations on your Hockey Stick post, which should be required reading for anyone who takes an interest in AGW, from whichever side of the debate.
There is only one Chatham House Rule, and it is as follows:
Although it seems probable – from what Alex and Bishop Hill have said – that the the rule was applied to the BBC seminar I still have no confirmation of this. If you follow the link above you will find that the rule can be applied in different ways.
According to the Chatham House website (see Tony’s link above), the purpose of the Chatham House Rule is to provide “anonymity to speakers and to encourage openness and the sharing of information”. It goes on to say that its advantage is that “It allows people to speak as individuals, and to express views that may not be those of their organizations, and therefore it encourages free discussion. People usually feel more relaxed if they don’t have to worry about their reputation or the implications if they are publicly quoted.” The BBC is obviously entitled to hold a meeting on that basis.
But the Rule exists to protect the participants – not to protect the organisation holding the meeting. Therefore, I believe it would be wrong for a publicly funded body such as the BBC to determine its editorial policy on a matter of public importance on the basis of a meeting where the Rule applies – if participants fear that their views might cause problems with their employers or might endanger their reputations, those views are unlikely to be a good basis for editorial policy. If, however, the participants have no such fears but the BBC wishes for some reason to keep their identities secret, that would be a misuse of the Rule.
Robin
Although Alex and Bishop Hill think that the seminar would have been held under the Chatham house rule, the BBC makes no mention of this in their letter.
I have always understood that the the Rule only applies to the attribution of what is said at a meeting. In other words it is only an embargo on revealing who said what, and not on what was said. The wording of the rule is certainly open to this interpretation. If it becomes an issue, then I hope that I will be able to get a definitive (and impartial) opinion from Chatham House.
Even if the Rule does apply, I do not see that it can have any implications for providing me with the invitation list as there can be no duty to protect the anonymity of the recipients prior to their acceptance on the basis of whatever terms the invitation set out. Or am I wrong?
I fully agree with what you say about the BBC’s conduct if they did in fact use the Rule as a means of dodging public scrutiny of such an important event.
Tony:
Your understanding is correct. I have attended and have chaired many meetings (or parts of meetings) to which the Rule applied – in both the public and private sectors. My clear understanding has always been that, as you say, the Rule is only concerned with attribution: unless the meeting was “off the record” (a different matter altogether), it does not prevent what was said being reported and/or used.
But it does prevent the disclosure of either the name or affiliation of any participant. Therefore, I do not think the BBC would be safe to disclose the names of invitees as (presumably) some of them went on to become participants. There is, of course, no reason why the BBC should not confirm whether or not the meeting was held subject to the Rule.
Robin: My point is that at the time that the invitation list was drawn up there were no participants, so there could be no agreemnent between the organiser and any participant.
Tony: I’m still of the view that it would be unsafe for the BBC to disclose the names of invitees as (presumably) some of them went on to become participants – unless perhaps you asked before the meeting took place.
Robin: Let’s hope that it is an issue that never has to be addressed. For the time being the matter is in the hands of the Information Commissioner I intend to wait and see what he comes up with.
Can the Chatham House Rule apply given that the BBC have already admitted “The key speaker at the seminar was Robert McCredie, Lord May of Oxford”?
Gareth
I wondered about that too, but unless I see documentary evidence that the Rule applied to this meeting I’m working on the assumption that it did not.
Gareth/Tony: I didn’t know about the disclosure of Robert McCredie as “key speaker”. In that case, it seems the Rule cannot apply – unless individual participants requested that their contribution or attendance be subject to it.
It would seem that Lord May has ample opportunity to “stamp out” dissenting views in the US as well since he is a member of the Senior Editorial Board of the journal Science. One wonders if that can be a partial explanation for Science’s non-enforcement of its own rules on archiving data.
Geoff
Interesting!
I have a note from October 2006 which suggests that at that time May was a non-executive director of the Met Office. Brian Hoskins of Reading seems to have been on the board too and Sir David King (May’s successor as chief scientific adviser to the government) was on the panel that appointed John Mitchell as Met Office chief scientist about that time. See here for much, much more about Mitchell:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3192
And of course Bob Ward thrived at the Royal Society when May was the president.
Interesting crowd.
The involvement of Robert McCredie (Lord May) as lead speaker at the BBC seminar is disturbing. He is a very senior and influential person – an OM and ex Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government, ex President of the Royal Society and a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford (just a few of his many achievements). He is, I understand, an eloquent and persuasive speaker. His view on climate change is unequivocal: for example, in his valedictory address to the Royal Society, he said,
Although many of his recommendations are eminently sensible, he is – as TonyN has noted – fiercely partisan and a vocal opponent of those who are sceptical about the dangerous anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. For example, in the valedictory address, he said,
These an extraordinary accusation – and is, so far as I am aware, wholly unsubstantiated.
It would, I suggest, be difficult for anyone with limited knowledge of the climate change issue who heard him at the BBC seminar not to be persuaded by his views – unless, that is, he was balanced by another distinguished speaker with equally good credentials; Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT comes to mind. That’s why it’s so important to know more about the content of the BBC’s ” high-level seminar’ and, in particular, who were the so-called “best scientific experts” who took part. Otherwise, it is impossible for licence-payers to form a judgement about whether or not the BBC’s editorial policy was properly informed – and about the BBC’s subsequent objectivity on this extraordinarily important issue.
Hello TonyN
Thanks for your response via Climate Audit concerning BBC bias.
I am happy to send you information but would rather not do it in an open forum. Can I have your email address?
Nice Web site. I used to live along the estuary at Farchynys so know your part of the world well. Interesting to hear about the plans for the airfield. The communications are too dire for it to become a proper commercial airport but it would be nice to see it providing desperately needed local jobs.
TonyB
If the seminar was discussing climate change and the policies regarding the dissemination of information on climate change, why would it not be subject to the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 which has a presumption of disclosure and fewer absolute exceptions?