Letter From the UK (About Liars and Their Pants)

Conspiracies at the BBC

We have long had the view that the MSM has jumped into tank of global warming advocacy.  It has now come to light that the BBC overtly conspired to frame the news to promote greenist propaganda on global warming--and was funded by the taxpayer to boot. 

This from the Daily Mail:

BBC's six-year cover-up of secret 'green propaganda' training for top executives

• Pensioner forces BBC to lift veil on 2006 eco-seminar to top executives
• Papers reveal influence of top green campaigners including Greenpeace
• Then-head of news Helen Boaden said it impacted a 'broad range of output'
• Yet BBC has spent more than £20,000 in legal fees trying to keep it secret

By David Rose

The BBC has spent tens of thousands of pounds over six years trying to keep secret an extraordinary ‘eco’ conference which has shaped its coverage of global warming,  The Mail on Sunday can reveal.  The controversial seminar was run by a body set up by the BBC’s own environment analyst Roger Harrabin and funded via a £67,000 grant from the then Labour government, which hoped to see its ‘line’ on climate change and other Third World issues promoted in BBC reporting.

The story reads like a pulp thriller, with as many turns and convolutions.
  Firstly, the conspiratorial confabulation was advised and informed by extremist climate wingnuts:

All four scientists present were strong advocates of the dangers posed by global warming. They were led by Lord May, former president of the Royal Society, who, though not a climate expert, has argued that warming is a greater threat than nuclear war. Other non-BBC staff who attended included Blake Lee-Harwood, head of campaigns at Greenpeace, John Ashton from the powerful green lobby group E3G, Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation, who argued there were only 100 months left to save the planet through radical emissions cuts, and Ashok Sinha of Stop Climate Chaos.

The BBC contingent included future director-general George Entwistle, Peter Horrocks, head of TV news, Stephen Mitchell, head  of radio news, Francesca Unsworth, head of newsgathering, and Peter Rippon, editor of Radio 4’s PM.

There is no doubt that the confabulation shaped BBC "framing" and presenting of climate news, so as to trumpet climate alarmism and the threat of global warming at every opportunity.  Moreover, there was an agreement to keep the whole thing quiet.

In a written statement opposing disclosure in 2012 (of the secret confabulation), former BBC news chief and current director of BBC radio Helen Boaden, who attended the event, admitted: ‘In my view, the seminar had an impact on a broad range of BBC output.’

Plea: Part of Helen Boaden's statement opposing disclosure in 2012. She also said the seminar had sought to 'identify where the main areas of debate lie'. She is now the director of BBC radio.

The BBC spent tens of thousands of public monies trying to hush the conspiracy up.  But the most delicious irony is that the scandal was exposed by a blogger.

The BBC began its long legal battle to keep details of the conference secret after an amateur climate blogger spotted a passing reference to it in an official report.  Tony Newbery, 69, from North Wales, asked for further disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. The BBC’s resistance to revealing anything about its funding and the names of those present led to a protracted struggle in the Information Tribunal. The BBC has admitted it has spent more than £20,000 on barristers’ fees. However, the full cost of their legal battle is understood to be much higher.

For shame!  But the conspiracy is still bearing fruit, controlling, shaping, and distorting the BBC's coverage of "climate events.  The most recent example is the irrational inconsistency in its coverage of the recent UK storms versus its coverage of the beleaguered climate scientists/tourists trapped amidst Antarctic ice.

... and how the Corporation's lessons are still paying off

COMMENT by DAVID ROSE

Last week was a big one for weather news: the storms and floods in Britain, and the end of the bizarre saga which saw the Akademik Shokalskiy, the ship carrying climate scientists, tourists and a BBC reporter to inspect the ravages of global warming, trapped in Antarctic ice.  In both cases, the BBC stuck closely to its skewed, climate alarmist agenda.

David Cameron fuelled suggestions that the storms might be due to climate change by saying in the Commons he had ‘suspicions’ they were. The Met Office denied this was the case.

Swamped: Flooding on the River Thames last week. David Rose said the BBC followed an agenda

But repeatedly, the BBC followed the PM’s line. Slots on the Radio 4 Today programme and Radio 5 repeated the bogus proposition on three separate days – and in none were sceptics allowed to present an alternative view.   Yet the facts are clear. Met Office records show that December 2013 was only the 20th wettest since 1910. It had just two-thirds the rainfall of the wettest, 1914.  For October to December, 2013 was only the 14th wettest year, and there has been no discernible trend in  UK or English rainfall for more than 100 years.

But though the BBC was suggesting the storms were ‘climate’ rather than ‘weather’, it took a contradictory view over the icebound ship.  Radio 4’s Inside Science told listeners that the ice was a freak, unpredictable event – driven by weather, not climate – and even added it had been falsely ‘used by climate deniers’ to advance their case.

Rescue: The crew of the trapped Russian vessel MV Akademik Shokalskiy were airlifted from the Antarctic

Nevertheless, it allowed an interviewee to state without challenge that overall, Antarctic sea ice is only one per cent above average.  In fact, it is at record levels, 15 per cent (3.5 million square miles) above normal, and has been increasing for years – a trend the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits it cannot explain.