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. A lobby group with close links to green campaigners, the International Broadcasting Trust (IBT), promised Ministers the seminars would influence programme content for years to come. --David Rose, Mail on Sunday, 12 January 2014
What is clear in the Mail on Sunday report is that funding for the 2006 BBC climate change seminar came from a government department. Also that the funds were channelled through environmental lobbyists who were organising the seminar. And it is possible that the government department that provided the funds had some input about the topics selected for the seminars. Lord Hall, as the man who encouraged Roger Harrabin to set up the seminar programme, features in this story too. However since his return to the BBC he has thrown some interesting light on the matter, contradicting just about everything that the BBC has claimed about the seminar previously. --Tony Newbery, Harmless Sky, 12 January 2014
What is certain is that the Government organised the 2005 Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change conference at the Hadley Centre, which led to a barrage of scare stories in the media, and that this was done in order to raise public awareness of the problem. A major seminar at the BBC early the following year, which was organised by environmental lobbyists who were being funded by a government department, must have seemed like a godsend to the Downing Street spin-doctors. --Tony Newbery, Harmless Sky, 12 January 2014
The new attention on the BBC’s 28gate seminar has been prompted by disclosure of documents showing how the [UK Government’s] Department for International Development responded to a funding request for funding from the International Broadcasting Trust a body that lobbies broadcasters on behalf of green NGOs. What we have, in essence, appears to be government paying for subversion of the state broadcaster. –Andrew Montford, Bishop Hill, 12 January 2014
In October 2007, while looking for something interesting to read, I came across a blog posting about a leaked BBC email. While it was interesting, it appeared relatively insignificant. There was no hint that this was to be the beginning of an investigation that would span more than four years and to lead to one of the greatest scandals in the history of the BBC. This long article tells the story of how two determined bloggers unearthed a plot by environmentalists and BBC journalists to subvert the corporation’s output, excluding global warming sceptics from the airwaves. --Andrew Montford, Bishop HillThe BBC and Climate Change: A Triple Betrayal shows that the BBC has not only failed in its professional duty to report fully and accurately: it has betrayed its own principles, in three respects: First, it has betrayed its statutory obligation to be impartial, using the excuse that any dissent from the official orthodoxy was so insignificant that it should just be ignored or made to look ridiculous. Second, it has betrayed the principles of responsible journalism, by allowing its coverage to become so one-sided that it has too often amounted to no more than propaganda. Third, it has betrayed the fundamental principles of science, which relies on unrelenting scepticism towards any theory until it can be shown to provide a comprehensive explanation for the observed evidence. --The Global Warming Policy Foundation, December 2011
