Last week I posted about the submission that Andrew Montford of Bishop Hill and I sent to the BBC’s Review of the Impartiality and Accuracy of Science Coverage. In passing, I mentioned that initially we had written to Professor Richard Tait, Chairman of the BBC Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee (ESC), who was fronting the project, but had failed to get any kind of response from him. I also said that I would post more about this later.
In fact I mentioned what happened in another post on 3rd August 2010, but as putting our submission in the public domain last week created so much interest – Harmless Sky had by far its heaviest traffic to date, although some of that was due to the Ofcom story – it seems worthwhile making the whole correspondence available now, if for no other reason than that it shows what a very strange organisation the BBC is.
This is the original letter that Andrew and I sent to Professor Tait:
Dear Professor Tait
BBC Trust Review of Accuracy and Impartiality of Science Coverage
We understand that during 2010 the BBC Trust intends to carry out a review of the Corporation’s science coverage. This is welcome and encouraging news.
We both run blogs, at Bishop Hill and Harmless Sky respectively, and we have both been extremely critical the BBC’s output relating to climate change. As I am sure you are aware, such comment often becomes the subject of mainstream media stories now, a trend that is likely to accelerate as the public’s scepticism about anthropogenic global warming grows and the media adjust its editorial policies accordingly.
We realise that pubic criticisms of the BBC’s impartiality is very harmful to the Corporation’s reputation, but experience has taught us that, where this subject is concerned at least, going through the official complaints procedures is slow, time-consuming, frustrating, and usually ineffective. The BBC has also failed to respond positively to enquiries that we have made.
It would seem reasonable to assume that the BBC Trust has instituted this review as a result of concern within the organisation as well as criticisms that have appeared in the media and elsewhere. Of the three topics specifically mentioned in the BBC Trust’s press release announcing the review – GM crops, the MMR vaccine and climate change – there can be no doubt that the latter has had by far the greatest impact on public policy and the everyday lives of BBC viewers, listeners, and website visitors. The BBC is a major opinion former in the UK.
We feel that, if the BBC Trust’s review is to be credible and lead to a genuine reappraisal of BBC editorial policy on this crucial subject, then it is essential that the voices of informed critics should be heard. Indeed it is difficult to see how even the terms of reference for the review can be established without some input from sceptical bloggers.
The unexpected and dramatic events of the last few months concerning the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, the failure of the Copenhagen summit, and revelations about the conduct of the IPCC have changed attitudes in the media dramatically, and this transformation has been largely led by the blogosphere. Evidence from opinion polls shows a steady increase in scepticism among the public over the last three years which is now accelerating. This does not suggest that editors will revise their newly adopted policies of publishing sceptical material about climate change any time soon.
As the BBC’s report on impartiality in the 21st century, published in 2007, made clear, impartiality is the cornerstone of the BBC brand. Our concern is that the BBC’s reputation for impartiality should be preserved. We have substantial archives relating to the way that the BBC has reported climate change in recent years and we will be happy to assist the review process in any way that we can.
Yours sincerely
I think that most people would agree that this was constructive, moderate in tone, and fairly conciliatory considering the problems that we have both encountered when dealing with the BBC in the past.
Not having an email address for Professor Tait, I sent the letter to Bruce Vander, the secretary of the ESC with the following covering note:
Date sent: Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:13:43 +0100
Dear Mr Vander
I attach a letter addressed to Professor Richard Tait and I would be most grateful if you will ensure that he receives this and confirm that you have done so.
Yours sincerely
Tony Newbery
http://www.harmlesssky.org
Which really could not be very much clearer or more straightforward.
I expected swift confirmation that the letter had been passed to the great man and that, in due course, a more or less non-committal, but diplomatic, reply would be forthcoming. Perhaps something along the lines of, ‘Thank you for offering to make a submission to the our review. This should be sent my colleague ….. Do not hesitate to contact me again if … etc, etc’. But that’s not what happened at all.
Just an hour-and-a -quarter after I had hit send, this arrived:
Dear Mr Newbery, Mr Montford,
Thank you for your letter to the BBC Trust, the contents of which I note. [sic]
I will, of course, share you [sic] letter with Richard Tait and with Professor Steve Jones who is authoring the review, but let me take this opportunity to respond to a number of the points you raise.
Your letter states that: ‘It would seem reasonable to assume that the BBC Trust has instituted the review as a result of concern within the organisation as well as criticisms that have appeared in the media and elsewhere’. This is not the case, as the press release and published terms of reference make clear. This is the latest in a series of reviews that assess impartiality in specific areas of BBC output. Previous topics covered were BBC coverage of business (2007) and the devolved nations (2008).
It is a key priority for the Trust that the BBC covers potentially controversial subjects with due impartiality, as required by the Royal Charter and Agreement. The review is a ‘health check’ of current coverage, looking to identify both good and bad practice. It makes no presumption of significant failings – or, for that matter, successes – at the outset.
The published terms of reference make clear what is in the review’s scope and what is out, and the means by which Professor Jones will go about assessing the BBC’s coverage, including detailed content analysis, engagement with key stakeholders and audience research if deemed appropriate.
I hope this letter goes some way to clarifying some of the points you raise.
Yours sincerely,
Jacquie Hughes
Editorial projects [sic] Leader
I have not the slightest idea what an Editorial projects [sic] Leader at the BBC might be, and nor do I very much care. If a letter is addressed to a particular person, however exalted, I do expect to receive a reply from them, even if it only says that the matter is being delegated to someone else. That is a very basic matter of courtesy as well as being sensible public relations.
I’m not going to discuss the content of Ms Hughes’ letter, although there is at least one claim in it that may raise a few eyebrows, but let’s just focus on the careful choice of words in the second paragraph: ‘I will, of course, share you letter with Richard Tait and with Professor Steve Jones who is authoring the review’. There is a world of difference between ‘sharing’ a letter that was not addressed to you with the intended recipient and actually giving it to them, and anyway I hadn’t sent the letter to Ms Hughes but to the secretary of the committee that Professor Tait chairs, with a specific request to deliver it to him. Quite honestly, I wasn’t in the least bit interested in what the Editorial Projects Leader had to say, and in any case her letter didn’t address the main point of our letter, which was to find out whether the BBC’s review would consider a submission from a couple of bloggers who had taken a particular interest in the impartiality of their coverage of climate science. Make no mistake, we were in no doubt that, for some people at the BBC such a submission would be about as welcome as a pile of dog poo on the living room carpet, but that’s not the point. In such circumstances grown-up organisations, however large and exalted, usually go through the motions of being polite and pragmatic when dealing with critics.
I had no intention of getting involved in correspondence with a member of the BBC Trust’s staff who had apparently intercepted the letter, or had it diverted to them by the very person who had been asked to pass it to his boss. So I wrote to Bruce Vander again.
Date sent: Thu, 08 Apr 201010:14:21 +0100
Dear Mr Vander
I look forward to receiving your confirmation that Professor Tait has received the letter that I attached to an email that I sent to you yesterday.
Yours sincerely,
Tony Newbery
http://www.harmlesssky.org
And again:
Date sent: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 11 :26 :02 +0100
Dear Mr Vander
On 7th April 2010 I emailed you asking that a letter to Professor Tait, which I attached, should be forwarded to him and also for confirmation that this had been done.
I look forward to receiving your response.
Yours sincerely,
Tony Newbery
http://www.harmlesssky.org
And yet again:
Date sent: Tue, 04 May 2010 08:31 :07 +0100
Dear Mr Vander
I emailed you on 7th April 2010 in your capacity as secretary to the ESC enclosing a letter addressed to Professor Tait, the chairman of the committee. You have not responded to my request for confirmation that Professor Tait has received this letter in spite of my sending you two reminders.
Unless you provide me with either the confirmation that I requested — or a reason why you have chosen not to pass the letter to Professor Tait — by the end of this week, I will seek an explanation from the BBC Trust for your failure to act appropriately. Ignoring my correspondence will not, I am afraid, make this matter go away.
Yours sincerely
Tony Newbery
http://www.harmlesssky.org
The irony of this situation will not be lost on those who have noticed that Mr Vander is the BBC Trust’s Complaints Manager as well as secretary to the ESC.
Be that as it may, this fourth message did provoked a response, nearly a month after I had asked for confirmation that Professor Tait had received our letter.
Date sent: Tue, 4 May 2010 09:08:02 +0100
Dear Mr Newberry [sic]
I am confused by your requests that you require confirmation that Richard Tait has seen your letter of 7 April 2010. As my colleague, Jacquie Hughes, Editorial Project Manager, wrote to you on the same day (7 April) confirming that she would share your letter with both Richard Tait and Professor Steve Jones, author of the Science Review, which I believe she has done.
You may also remember that she clarified that the review was the latest in a series of reviews that asses impartiality and is a ‘health check’ of current coverage which makes no presumption of significant failings and will identify good and bad practice. The review is not as you suggested “as a result of concern within the organisation”.
Yours sincerely,
Bruce Vander
Complaints Manager and Secretary to the ESC
Up to this point, I had clung on to the hope that the BBC weren’t playing silly word games by referring to the letter being shared. After all, even critics of the BBC would expect our national broadcaster to behave in a grown-up way over such a trivial matter of office procedure. The first paragraph of Mr Vander’s letter dispelled this hope when instead of answering my question he echoed the term ‘share’. And why? Oh why? would Mr Vander say that he believes that the letter has been shared with Professor Tait? Wouldn’t it be so much easier just to say that the letter has been passed to the person it was addressed to if that was the case.
By now Mr Vander was not only wasting his employer’s time, but mine too, so I was fairly blunt when I replied.
Date sent: Thu, 06 May 201010:17:17 +0100
Dear Mr Vander
Thank you for your email and I regret that you find my request confusing.
I would be grateful if you would now answer the question which I asked: have you given the letter to Professor Tait, and if not why not? Your email does not answer this question, although it implies that you have not done so.
Passing the letter to another BBC Trust employee who proposes to ‘share’ the letter with the intended recipient is not an adequate response, and nor is saying that you ‘believe’ that this has been done.
I wish to know whether Professor Tait has received the letter, which was addressed to him.
Yours sincerely,
Tony Newbery
http://www.harmlesssky.org
Unfortunately Mr Vander had still not got the message that I really did want a sensible answer, or perhaps I just wasn’t tugging my forelock humbly enough. After another ten days has slipped by, I had another try.
Date sent: Mon, 17 May 2010 08:58:59 +0100
Dear Mr Vander
I look forward to receiving a reply to my email of 6th May which I have copied below for your convenience.
Your sincerely
Tony Newbery
http://www.harmlesssky.org
Which triggered this auto-reply:
Date sent: Mon, 17 May 2010 08:59:57 +0100
Out of Office AutoReply: Re BBC Review of Science Reporting
Thank you for your email. I am out of the office until 1 June, if your matter requires urgent attention please email XXXXXXX XXXXX at: xxxxxx.xxxxx@bbc.co.uk or XXXX XXXXXXX at xxxx.xxxxxx@bbc.co.uk
As it was now the holiday season, and I was going to be away myself, there was no choice but to be patient. Eventually this turned up in my inbox:
Date sent: Thu, 3 Jun 2010 13:46:48 +0100
Dear Mr Newbery
Thank you for your email dated 17 May.
Please accept my apologies for the delay to my reply but I have been away from the office on leave and only returned this week.
I am writing to confirm that your letter has been shared with Richard Tait.
Yours sincerely,
Bruce Vander
Complaints Manager and Secretary to the ESC
By this time I was about ready to start screaming.
Up until this point I had refrained from blogging about this, although the BBC Trust’s obtuseness – or worse – had made it very tempting. As I’ve said before on this blog, I don’t particularly enjoy Auntie bashing; all I want is a BBC that one can rely on to behave correctly, and be proud of as one of the great British institutions. However this episode had now become so bizarre that there was good reason to make it public, so I wrote what I think was a fairly restrained post about it and, observing the usual courtesy of offering the right of reply to someone who is being criticised, let Mr Vander know that I had done so.
Date sent: Tue, 03 Aug 2010 16:45:14 +0100
Dear Mr Vander
I have now posted a copy of the joint letter sent by Andrew Montford and myself to Professor Tait on 7th April at my blog, together with some comments on the problems we have had obtaining confirmation that this has been delivered to him:
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blogl?p=319#more-319
It seems only fair to let you know about this, and I will of course be willing to post any response that the BBC Trust may choose to make.
Yours sincerely
Tony Newbery
http://www.harmlesssky.org
The reply was:
Date sent: Tue, 3 Aug 2010 17:08:37 +0100
Dear Mr Newbery
Thank you for email dated 3 August 2010.
Yours sincerely,
Bruce Vander
Complaints Manager and Secretary to the ESC
And at that stage I decided that it really wasn’t worth spending any more time trying to find out whether Professor Tait had seen our letter: or whether it had been diverted to Ms Hughes so that he would not have to reply to it: and if so why? Or whether Professor Tait had in fact seen the letter and connived at the prevarication that followed. Or why any of this should happen when a courteous acknowledgement and emollient invitation to make a submission to the review would have been the sensible response. Such behaviour breeds mistrust.
Eventually, in September, Andrew Montford discovered that the public – but evidently not critical bloggers who might be alarmingly well informed about the issues – had been invited to make representations to the BBC Trust’s review. He wrote to Professor Steve Jones to ask if he would accept a submission from us. The correspondence was brief, but courteous, businesslike, and prompt. Professor Jones gave no indication that he had heard anything of our letter to Professor Tait, although he was not specifically asked about this.
This story has a moral. Last week we went public with our submission to the review, and it immediately began to cause embarrassment to the BBC. If I am interpreting whispers reaching me now correctly, that may be just the start.
Had we received an appropriate response to our original approach to the BBC Trust we might have been content to wait until their review was published before saying anything.
TonyN (in footnote to my #23)
No insult intended! I include myself among the grumpy old men, of course. My point was that we are motivated by the subjects we discuss, and the problems they raise, and lack the presentational skills of all those p-for-performance artists and activists whose websites resemble glossy brochures selling climate change as a fashion accessory.
Peter geany, agree 100% with both your comments.
The BBC have done themselves (or us) no service by their shoddy behaviour in this matter. There are many of us who were once proud of what we believed was a world class broadcasting service, not any more, their bias is apparent to virtually all except it would seem the BBC themselves and its Trust. There are indeed many who are extremely resentful at having to pay for this bloated organziation and would much prefer the money to go elsewhere.
(As an aside the postman recently called to deliver a letter to a new house being built next door to us. The roof has only just gone on but the building lacks power, water etc, being an empty shell. The missive proved to be a third and final demand for a tv licence!)
Next time you want to send an email to someone, asked for their email address and send it to them directly.
Never ask a third party to pass it on because you have no assurance that they will have done so.
Simples!
This is a fabulous tale, but not for its internal story. This CAGW/skeptic dispute is far less about actual happenings in the physical world as it is about human psychology.
The refusal to pass something on, the refusal to answer a simple question (as to whether “share” is actually, “I gave it to him”) is familiar to me through my many years as a technical manager. The inability – it strikes me that “refusal” may not be appropriate here – to face that which is against core beliefs or the moment’s ego seems to be behind the climate change arguments. It may be a symptom of the same issue that stops people from running away from advancing armies that slaughter them. Some eventualities are too gruesome or shattering to our worldview to allow into our lives. We will watch the flames consume us rather than admit we are in a fire. Right or wrong is not at stake. How we think of ourselves is.
Humans seem intelligent and progressive. They seem creative and open-minded. But perhaps we are so in only a very limited way. Perhaps that is why we still have national wars. Why we stockpile nuclear weapons, vacuum-fish the seas and make Reality Shows number 1 TV entertainment.
The difficulty seems less to me about facts than it is about getting others to objectively review their hardwon, hardwired positions.
Perhaps psychiatrists and psychologists should be running the Copenhagen and Cancun events. Maybe Al Gore should have a shrink standing beside him to rein in his excessiveness and explain to the audience what is really going on behind his eyeballs.
I read with ever-increasing amusement your attempt to whip up outrage at your treatment by the BBC. I fail to understand your grievance.
You effectively sent an unsolicited email to the head of a major project asking for special treatment – I could liken this to my writing to the MD of Wembley Stadium asking for tickets to see Take That, or slightly closer to home, somebody cold-calling me with a CV asking for a job when I am not in a recruitment phase.
With the tickets there is an established protocol – you must dip in to the hell that is trying to get through to a ticket agency website. With the CV, you need to wait until I advertise a job – I will not be able to offer you a job that has not been advertised through the usual channels. With the BBC Review – you simply need to submit your request in the standard manner. And lo …
So, where is the problem here? The fact that you were not especially advised by the BBC of the fact that submissions were invited, and you had to follow the same route as the rest of the country? Shame. Was it the fact that your original mail was not answered personally by the chairman of the ESC? This was a BAU note that was answered in a BAU manner – do you really think every mail sent to a two-day-per-week Trust member will be initially opened and answered by that person? That is why you have admin staff – to help with that exact problem.
Your initial letter was answered within 75 minutes. A courteous reply was sent to you, indicating a couple of inaccuracies in your original mail, and she even points you in the direction of the Terms of Reference which clarify how information will be sourced. Job done.
On a side note, it was good of you to point out the slight grammatical error and type in Ms Hughes’s note – I note you don’t feel obliged to highlight your ‘pubic criticism’ typo in the same fashion.
And finally, it was a nice touch to wait to publish the affair on your blog until Professor Tait had left the BBC Trust, being replaced by Richard Ayre, and therefore being completely unable to respond in any official manner whatsoever. Class.
[TonyN: the term ‘sic’ is not used to point out grammatical errors, but to indicate that an error has not been made in transcription.]
Tony, two words required to understand this…Common Purpose.
AndyB
Tony’s Kafkaesque dealings with the BBC Trust bureaucracy did, indeed, “whip up outrage”, as you can see from the many blogger comments.
This is all quite apart from any “outrage” that is felt by many as a result of the lack of impartiality in the BBC in reporting issues relating to the ongoing debate of the science and the policies related to “climate change”.
Max
Max
AndyB I’m afraid your analogies are way out and have no bearing on what Tony and Andrew are trying to achieve. You see the FA owns Wembley and the only people who contribute to their coffers are Football Fans (the poor sods) and those attending or holding other functions there. Theirs is a commercial operation.
We the public own the BBC and it’s not too strong to say strong arm tactics are used to get us to pay up. If we could exercise the same discretionary choice we do when deciding to watch England play at Wembley the BBC would be but a shadow of its self with a staff of about 10. So AndyB you may wish to reconsider your comments
Geoff Chambers, #23:
As usual you have a good point.
Could one make a comparison between 21st century blogs and the inflammatory, smudgy, and cheaply printed political pamphlets of the late 18th and early 19th Century? I hope so, because they played a major role in mobilising public pressure for political reforms that led to greater social responsibility and enhanced democracy.
The BBC is remarkable in that it is supposed to serve the public, but is the only organisation I can think of that absolutely, totally and completely refuses to negotiate with the public.
The public collectively withholding its licence fee funding is the only way I can think of to change this. It would empower the people.
TonyN,
You say that “As I’ve said before on this blog, I don’t particularly enjoy Auntie bashing; all I want is a BBC that one can rely on to behave correctly, and be proud of as one of the great British institutions.”
Well it doesn’t com across like that.
You seem to expect that Prof Tait should reply to you in person. You could make the same argument about any letter sent to David Cameron, or even the Queen. You could argue that you pay their wages, and for the upkeep of various palaces, and that you should receive a personal reply from them too. You’re their employer! Well, you can try if you like, but my guess is you’d receive a very similar letter of reply to the one from the very patient Ms Hughes at the BBC.
We will all have to wait and see just how Professor Tait will be handling the subject of scientific impartiality, but I doubt that he will introduce any changes which may be described as to your liking. The BBC do seem to understand that science and politics do need to be handled somewhat differently.
Peter
The BBC are lying even now. They’re claiming that England were bowled out for 260. That can’t be true, the robust projections were for at least 350.
tonyb
PeterS
Living outside the UK, I do not know how the publicly paid BBC license fee is actually paid by the public.
But the principle is clear: if the public is paying for BBC, the same public should have a strong voice in how BBC is run (it’s the old “golden rule”).
If the “public servants” who are running BBC are not doing so to the complete satisfaction of those who are paying their salaries, they should be removed and replaced with “public servants” who truly want to “serve the public”.
Am I missing something here?
And if this takes a simple “revolution” of “the public [by] collectively withholding its licence fee funding” (as you suggest), then that seems like a good start to getting the message across to these public bureaucrats who the real boss is.
As a next step, it would be important for representatives of the “public” to be part of the BBC board of directors – possibly even a majority of the members, to get things back on a more sensible path.
The bureaucratic hacks that have given Tony and Andrew the runaround would have to be fired at the start in order to set the right tone.
The whole thing could initially pick up steam on the blogosphere, but would probably eventually take some sort of an organized “action committee” to “give BBC back to the public”.
Max
PeterM
You disappoint me, Peter,
I always thought that you were more of a “revolutionary firebrand” type, ready to step up and fight against injustice by those in power.
But here you are making lame excuses for the bureaucratic hacks at BBC that are giving Tony and Andrew the runaround when they want straight answers to straight questions..
Where’s that “revolutionary tiger” I thought I knew?
Has he become a submissive pussy-cat?
Max
AndyB
“You effectively sent an unsolicited email..”
yet
“..submissions were invited”
Hmmm.
I’m going to regret this, but…..
Manacker : Just because many (approximately 16) bloggers post comments agreeing with one persons mock-outrage does not necessarily make that person’s outrage in any way more valid. Tony’s post appears to be complaining about the lack of “respect” being paid to him as an ‘alarmingly well-informed’ blogger. Had he submitted his comments through the normal channels i.e. the same channels everybody else in the country is requested to use, and then had he been refused the courtesy of an acknowledgement, I would agree that he would have a right to feel a touch aggrieved (subject to any caveats from the BBC about not being able to acknowledge every mail etc etc). If a conduit is being set up for people to submit contributions, and a blogger decides that they wish to engage directly with the BBC Trust member overseeing the operation, it shows a lack of appreciation of the way a large enterprise must operate to ensure equal accessibility to all when they do not receive preferential treatment.
Re the lack of impartiality, if a viewpoint is held by over 80% of all peer-review publishing researchers in a scientific field, which would appear to be the case with AGW, then I am pretty relaxed about the BBC taking that as a consensus view – that is a overwhelming majority by any standards.
Peter Geany – that is an analogy, not a specific reference. It could have been U2 at Twickenham, Muse at Madison Square Gardens or Peter, Paul and Mary at the Dog and Duck. The fact remains that for all of those concerts (well, maybe except the Dog and Duck) for the public there is one way and only one way of getting tickets : through the advertised channels, which for most people is a website or a phone line. There was a specific channel for submissions to the BBC Review which Tony and Andrew were trying to go around by sending a mail directly (or rather indirectly) to the BBC Trust member with overall responsibility.
As for owning the BBC, hmmmmm. We fund it, certainly. Not sure that confers ownership. We fund the Army, albeit by a slightly different model. Does that mean we own it? The BBC has a responsibility to us to show that it is fulfilling its mandate. Personally, for what it is worth, I think they make a pretty good fist of it. I can not find any reference to having to give equal credence to minority scientific views – if that were the case we’d be having rebuttals by the Intelligent Design crew every time we had a documentary on Darwin.
Tony N – I am aware of the meaning of the ‘sic’ annotation. I usually find that, apart from The Guardian, who generally use it almost proudly to show that a spelling mistake was not just one of their famed typos, the majority of papers/bloggers use it to make a condescending point about the inability of the person concerned to spell or use correct sentence structure.
Chin chin.
The BBC, at its very base, is a messenger service. Its fundamental purpose and value to the British public is to collect and deliver news to those who have entrusted it with the task. The moment the BBC begins altering and filtering the material is collects with the intent of misleading and manipulating the public it reports back to is the moment the BBC becomes the British public’s enemy. It is the moment the BBC’s own interests contaminate its ability to act as messenger to the British people and the moment the organisation sets itself at odds with the best interests of those it is entrusted to serve – and those who fund it.
We live in sophisticated times – but it is important not to lose sight of the basics. Perhaps even more so when the BBC behaves as if it would like us to.
Max,
Has the BBC given Tony and Andrew the runaround? I hope so, but if I’ve any criticism of the BBC, its that they have been far too polite. Far too patient.
The BBC is never going to be out of step with bodies like the Royal Society or the country’s leading universities on scientific questions, whether on climate change or anything else.
If anyone genuinely believes the science to be wrong, then they, of course have every right to correct it. Sceptics/Deniers often suggest that they are like Galileo, fighting a dogmatic establishment. Well then, do what Galileo did then and get involved in science too. If there is a flaw in the prevailing argument then correct it. But you’ll have to do a bit better than the usual “it stopped warming in 1998” type arguments to make a real difference.
PeterM
You appear not to have understood what Tony wrote in his lead blog when you write that “they have been far too polite, far too patient”.
Read it again. Slowly.
Max
Max
AndyB
Sorry, Andy.
Just because 1 blogger (you) fails to see that the BBC “public servants” have acted arrogantly and out of line in their response to Tony/Andrew while 16 bloggers see this quite plainly does not make your view any more compelling than that of the other 16.
Can you substantiate your statement that
or is this just an unsubstantiated claim?
Max
AndyB
You (the voting citizenry) “own” the government (including BBC, the army, and anything else that this entails).
That’s what representative democracy is all about, Andy.
Max
Just to clear up a few misunderstandings ………….
The primary function of the BBC Trust is to ensure that the BBC Executive, from which it is supposed to be quite separate and independent, complies with the requirements concerning editorial standards laid down in various legal instruments: the Communications Act, the Charter, and the Agreement. It is only the existence, and the remit, of the BBC Trust that justifies the BBC’s power to finance itself by levying a hypothecated tax: the licence fee.
The Editorial Standards Committee of the BBC Trust, chaired until July this year by Professor Tait, is the means by which these obligations are discharged.
The header post on this thread is not about whether Professor Tait should have replied to our letter. It is not even about whether the letter should have been given to him. And it is certainly not about whether the BBC’s coverage of AGW is impartial. It is about the Secretary of the BBC Trust’s flagship committee refusing to say whether a letter addressed to its chairman had been withheld from him.
So far as ‘a conduit … being set up for people to submit contributions’ is concerned, and the suggestion that we were seeking ‘preferential treatment’, there was no clear indication at the time when the letter was sent that there would be any public consultation. The review’s terms of reference were equivocal on this point.
The letter we wrote had three purposes: to establish whether input from the BBC’s critics would be invited, to attempt to ensure that such input would be invited, and in the event of it not being invited, to make sure that if we were critical of the report after it was published, then we could not be accused of failing to make our views known while the review was in progress.
I wonder if the commenters who have been critical of our actions would demonstrate such sanctimonious empathy with their local council if they experienced the same treatment at their hands in connection with, say, a review of
refuse collectionenvironmental services.Since coming to the UK almost a decade ago to teach in state comprehensive schools after a successful career in New Zealand schools, I have had shattered many illusions I once held about various British institutions ; I once believed that the BBC was the very model of correctness in English grammar and hewed to the known and verified facts with dogged impartiality; that it was a veritable beacon of rectitude in a rude and unsympathetic world and a model for correct behaviour in all matters pertinent to broadcasting. Now I am angered that I must contribute financially and in no small measure to a broadcaster who neither informs me accurately and impartially, nor entertains me much. I am irritated every day when I hear such linguistic silliness as ‘slippy’ instead of ‘slippery’ from announcers.
I also believed that the UK state education system was the excellent vehicle for educating the nations’s young that all the information given to us benighted colonials in darkest New Zealand said it was. Would that it were true, but education in the UK, like justice and good television, is largely available on the same basis as dinner at the Ritz.
The UK I was brought up by Anglophile parents to believe in has probably never existed and I now understand why my grandparent’s generation fled.
Alexander K. I too came to these shores from New Zealand, but way back in 79 when in my early 20’s. New Zealand was not such a great place for work back then and I came over to see the world and seek my fortune. I’ve achieved the former and am still chasing the latter. But back in those days the BBC was closer to what we would consider acceptable. It has always had a political agenda, but it mostly confined this to the political arena, and when it came to news and documentary coverage it was the gold standard that other broadcasters sort to emulate.
No broadcaster gets every program perfect but you could until quite recently trust to a degree that you were being fed a fair representation of what was happening. But the drop in standards in recent times has been quite appalling.
It should not puzzle anyone that the young don’t seem to be so exercised by what has happened to the BBC, this being simply that they have not yet been witness to any decline. On the whole the young don’t take as much interest in the news and documentaries as older people. If we say that you need to be able to remember what the service was like 15 years ago to form an impression of change, and on the whole it’s not until young adults start to grow up from about 25 onwards that they notice quality in broadcasting then they will be in the 40 to 45 plus age group now.
And it is precisely this group from 40 onwards that is kicking up about the BBC, because we have witnessed first-hand the decline. Many of the young, my own well educated sceptical children included, just can’t understand why we are so exercised about the BBC. They just dismiss our concerns as being a waste of time, and not likely to change anything.
This is a sad state of affairs and as these youngsters get older and take over from us they will not cherish the fond memories that we have of a once great broadcaster, and as our money further runs out, they and their political representatives will not protect and preserve the joke that is now the BBC.
Max
Touche. I am of course but one person, and you are correct, 16 other people on this board agree fully with Tony N that he has been treated shamefully. That is 16 people who all appear to have no doubt that the BBC is deliberately mis-stating facts regarding climate change, as opposed to one person who came across this site while surfing (remember that word) aimlessly around the web and was somewhat put out by the false hysteria being bandied about on this specific article. One person who works in a very large (250,000+) organisation (not related in any way shape or form to the BBC) and may possibly have an idea of how organisations of such size actually work. And all I can say is that Tony Newbery was not treated disgracefully – indeed, I would personally have found it difficult to maintain the civility with which he was treated.
As regards the 80% figure, I have no empirical proof. I have simply skimmed through a variety of sources, searching for surveys, specifically of scientists qualified to comment on the subject (ie peer-reviewed) and took a take on them. I did not actually see any figure as low as 80% by the way relating to agreement with the concept of AGW – I simply took that as a baseline below which there is little or no room for argument. I have found no respected sources that even hinted at a lower percentage.
Re owning the Army – do I have the right to tell the UK Land FOrces Commander how to hire his recruits? No, I have the right to lobby him through the standard established channels. Tony had that same right for the BBC Review – he chose to try and go around it.
Now it is Friday night, and I am out for a sharpener.
Chin chin.