Fair enough but surely as we are equipped (well at least I am) to be able to judge, disect, and base our opinions on information gleaned and assembled from a number of sources–as indeed you are doing, the BBC is supplying a source of information.
Can you seriously name a one stop news media that you would completely trust..??

BBC has a Charter which requires it to be impartial, particularly in regard to news and current affairs. It cannot be said to be impartial on AGW if it deliberately leaves out swathes of relevant information. It is therefore in breach of its Charter, and we cannot dismiss this lightly.

The Charter was put in place so that the public could have some degree of trust in BBC, without checking every fact or needing to seek alternative sources of information to see what BBC might have left out. Funding for BBC is compulsory, and if BBC is in default on its Charter, then we have every right to take away that funding.

Peter Sissons provides us with confirmation of the BBC’s determination to present only one side of the story, in wilful breach of journalistic ethics and flying in the face of the corporation’s own claims of impartiality and balance:

“At the end of November 2007 I was on duty on News 24 when the UN panel on climate change produced a report which later turned out to contain significant inaccuracies, many stemming from its reliance on non-peer reviewed sources and best-guesses by environmental activists.

But the way the BBC’s reporter treated the story was as if it was beyond a vestige of doubt, the last word on the catastrophe awaiting mankind. The most challenging questions addressed to a succession of UN employees and climate activists were ‘How urgent is it?’ and ‘How much danger are we in?’

Back in the studio I suggested that we line up one or two sceptics to react to the report, but received a totally negative response, as if I was some kind of lunatic. I went home and wrote a note to myself: ‘What happened to the journalism? The BBC has completely lost it.”

http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/peter-sissons-on-the-bbcs-climate-change-propaganda/

Steven

Actually I listen to Radio 4 a lot and despite what people here are saying, I find much of it informative and reasonably well balanced.
Of course I look at every issue from the view-point that the rich are trying to screw the poor, and governments are trying to screw each other and everyone else, etc, etc.
I agree that if you only watch television or worse BBC1, then you’re likely to learn very little useful, apart from the prizes on ‘Pointless’ are sh*t–and infact, that ‘Pointless’ is indeed that–pointless.
If I tend towards believing the BBC has any bias, I tend to see it as ‘HMG’s Propaganda Ministry’. Whatever the government of the day is, they tend to fall in line with the establishment.
Well, I suppose as they all went to Oxbridge together that follows.

On the issue of BBC misleading on the topic of AGW, it is not a question of wheher it appears that they were biased, they have actually been shown to have omitted whole reams of material which could have been used by viewers to form their own opinions. This is made worse by the ‘ratchet’ effect, where a news item is presented sensationally with many dramatic or overstated claims. The claims may later be refuted, but by then the clamour has declined, leaving most viewers with the exaggerated, superficial impressions, and not with the calmer and more rational understanding. The recent case with David Attenborough’s comments on warming in Africa, is a recent example of this.

Further back we have:

The 2007 Bridcut Report for the BBC Trust contained a strong warning for the Corporation. “The BBC has many public purposes of both ambition and merit – but joining campaigns to save the planet is not one of them,”

This is compounded by BBC’s obsession with secrecy over the key people involved in its decision to slant AGW coverage. This desire for secrecy even spills over into more innocuous reporting, as this enquirer found out.

You would think that asking for and receiving the names of the judges of a set of BBC awards would be a straightforward matter. The corporation’s own awards guidelines, available on its website, demand transparency. So it was surprising that when I asked who chose the winners of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards….. I was told it was a secret.

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/01/bbc-radio-2-folk-awards-bottom-of-the-class/

BBC has a long way to go to be trusted on the important matters, if the minor ones are treated with such haughty disdain.

Steven

😉

The EU directive about power station emissions was do with curbing acid rain, not global warming. steven_wh put CO2 in his post incorrectly.

I did not mention the LCPD as the primary reason. We knew that the older coal fired power stations would have to spend money to comply with this directive. The other legislation which costs them additional money was added later, namely the need to purchase carbon offsets for the CO2 that they produce. Given the deadline to comply, the producers opted to spend on CO2 offsets, running the coal power stations as much as possible on the maximum, and avoiding the LCPD by closing the plants early. Without CO2 emission charges the money would have been spent on the LCPD, keeping the plants economic.

The LCPD is targeted at power stations producing the kind of emissions which come from from coal or oil. It therefore did not need to include explicitly CO2 emissions, the effect and intent was the same.

But back to BBC omissions. My list of programme topics, over say six one hour slots, to rectify the lack of information on AGW would include (not necessarily in this order):

Additionally, a follow-up open panel Q&A session, plus Web interactive discussion.

Steven

Well, I’m not yet bored with this. In fact we have fresh impetus in the shape of comments on an adjacent subject to do with the size of our domestic energy bills.

All, entirely due to the demands that the EU places on some member countries to provide energy from renewable sources without regard for – here we go again – the accuracy and honesty of the data allegedly supporting those demands.

Some day soon, the nightmare of the EU will be gone and we will look back and wonder how it was that our Governments and a majority of our people could so easily be fooled by the EU apparachniks.

Next month, due to EU CO2 directives, about 10% of our viable power generation capacity will shut prematurely. We have installed new wind and solar renewables over the past few years, but when the wind is not blowing and at night or in cloudy weather, there is no power from these sources. Therefore, we will not have that 10% capacity available in reserve for such contingencies, bringing us closer to power blackouts. I expect that this is of no concern to the EU, only that we comply. Where is the debate on this on BBC?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/9878251/Keeping-Britains-lights-on-will-come-at-a-price.html

Steven

His quickfire humour and chirpy interjections against Margot are comedy classics. Why was he never Sir Richard Briers?

Steven

See, to my mind, it’s all about ‘NIMBY-ism’. Who here would want the process of ‘Fracking’ going under their little piece of ‘paradise’? A further question might also be: ‘If resources are so plentiful, why are comapnies having to resort to a process like fracking, which seems to have the smallest hint of desperation about it.

A.

PS. And I do admit that the figures were ‘jiggled’ about climate change. Too many people were/are making money from it for it not to happen.

There will be more contention for resources, whilst we are wrongly turning away from coal, the rest of the world is using it at a huge rate.

The UK has about 25,000MW capacity of coal powered stations. China proposes to increase its coal fired capacity by twenty two times that amount. Not many BBC people will tell you that.

It is therefore imperative that we exploit the shale gas that is literally under our feet.

Steven

That’s true but, much as I would like it otherwise, that petition has been largely discredited because of the lack of verification of the signatories and the wide diversity of their expertise.

You can get a list of the signatories, here. http://www.oism.org/pproject/

For such a key petition, there have been attempts at scamming it and attempts at discreditIng it by those with a vested interest in AGW. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/25/why-did-pbs-frontline-electronically-alter-the-signature-of-one-of-the-worlds-most-distinguished-physicists-in-their-report-climate-of-doubt/

It is a relatively old petition, so opposition to the global warming meme has always been there. Organisations like BBC have played their part in hiding the extent of the dissent, by ignoring such scientific counter views. Preferring instead to wheel out the resident Greenpeace or WWF stooges to state the expected BBC approved message.

As for the diversity of numerate and scientific backgrounds, this actually strengthens the case.

Steven

Since this obviously interesting post was started with the intent of reviewing BBC’s lack of coverage of most of the debate on AGW, here are some highly relevant topics which, to my knowledge, won’t have been covered by BBC.

Steven