Gross bias on BBC radio Oxford
FollowGuest blog by Chris Garrard
UPDATE: After a long process, with several rounds of complaints, responses, and responses to those responses, at the beginning of October the BBC has finally upheld the complaints and stated that “the ECU agreed that the presenter misrepresented the weight of evidence for man-made climate change and gave undue emphasis to a minority view”. Not only that, but also “The Editor has discussed the finding with the presenter and producer and reinforced the importance of asking challenging questions that are based on proper evidence and are well sourced”
On Thursday, staff, students and alumni at Oxford University were united in their opposition to a new partnership between Shell and the university’s Earth Sciences department: there were protests outside the launch event, a letter to the editor of The Guardian condemning the partnership and protesters gatecrashed the celebratory dinner later that evening.
I was asked to give an interview on BBC Radio Oxford’s Drivetime programme with David Prever (starting at about 1:33 h in, will be available until Thursday, May 16) that evening to explain the arguments behind the opposition and to talk about the new Fossil Free campaign . However, David Prever had other ideas. Fancying himself as the next Paxman, Prever attempted to stir up a heated discussion around the issue of whether climate change is actually happening, saying…
“I would argue also that the evidence against climate change is overwhelming. We could sit here and bat this one back for hours on end. It’s not an absolute given, is it now? And there’s a huge amount of evidence from esteemed organisations and professors and universities around the world that are calling into question a lot of the climate change information we have been fed for so many years.”
The ‘huge amount of evidence’ simply does not exist. Sure, there is debate about the rate and impacts but even Shell’s Executives accepts that climate change is happening, despite their lack of any concerted attempt to tackle it. I was shocked to be in conversation with a BBC journalist who was either uninformed and poorly briefed, or was determined to trot out hyperbole and complete fiction for the sake of a tussle.
The real let-down is that the ‘is it happening’ debate was put to bed a long time ago and this should have been an opportunity to talk about ‘what we should be doing’. But the BBC, from John Humphrys to David Prever, seems to disagree. It’s clearly time the BBC briefs their journalists from top to bottom to get with the times and up the quality of debate. And in order to redress the balance, we’re demanding David Prever makes an on-air retraction and that BBC Oxford set aside air time for setting the records straight on climate change. If you feel strongly too, please join us in making this demand!
How to make a complaint to the BBC:
The BBC’s online complaint procedure is very simple. All complaints are collated into a nightly report which is circulated the following morning to BBC staff.
Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/complain-online/; click ‘Make a complaint’ and just follow instructions…
Information you’ll need:
- The show was on BBC Local Radio (England); BBC Oxford; and is called Drivetime
- It was broadcast on May 9, 2013, and the relevant section happened at about 5:30pm, or 1:33h in.
You will then be asked “What is the best category to describe your complaint?” There are 3 categories which we feel are relevant in this case – Bias; Factual error or inaccuracy; Standards of Interviewing – choose whichever you feel is most relevant to what you are complaining about.
You will need to provide a 50-characters subject, and an up to 1500-characters detailed complaint.
And that’s it!
One last thing – it would be great to have a rough idea of how many people complained. So if you have, please do let us know in the comments below (you don’t have to use your real name…)
16 Responses to “Gross bias on BBC radio Oxford”
Use the Form Below to Leave a Reply
Done!
Done! I really hope BBC doesn’t turn into Fox News.
Just did as it suggested. Here’s what I wrote:
Hello. I’m getting in contact because on Friday I was listening to an interview that David Prever conducted with an Oxford University student — the interview was regarding the recent protests around Oxford Uni accepting funding from Shell.
In the interview, David Prever said the following:
“There’s a huge amount of evidence from esteemed organisations and professors and universities around the world that are calling into question a lot of the climate change information we have been fed for so many years.”
This is a widely inaccurate claim, in fact in the recent book, ‘The Inquisition of Climate Science’, it was shown that out of 13,950 scientific papers published between January 1991 and November 2012, only 24 (or 0.17%) clearly reject global warming or endorse a cause other than CO2 emissions for observed warming.
In addition to this, some of the many hundreds of respected scientic organisations that endorse CO2 as being the primary driver of global warming include: the American Association for the Advancement of Science (the world’s largest general scientific society), The Royal Society, the European Science Foundation, the World Meteorological Organization, and NASA.
A BBC journalist should simply not be allowed to make such an inaccurate statement without any evidence to back it up, and I would therefore ask that BBC Oxford sets aside air time for setting the records straight on climate change.
Thank you
Done
Done.
Complaint lodged!
Done.
Complaint submitted
Clearly you haven’t looked at the recent data
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.C.gif
Do you mean us, or the BBC presenter? Because this graph clearly shows that since 1996 the monthly mean global surface temperature has never once gone below the normal. In fact it keeps fluctuating between 0.2 and 1.2 degrees above normal, with an gradual increase in the data towards 2012.
“It’s clearly time the BBC briefs their journalists from top to bottom to get with the times and up the quality of debate.”
They already did that, in 2006..
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/09/bbc_beats_blogger_/
@ James
How deniers view global warming – http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=47
Complaint submitted.
Complaint submitted.
Have submitted a complaint and said that they organise a training course or at the least provide a briefing on the state of the science for their journalists to prevent such ridiculously biased or ill-informed reporting from repeating itself. There’s enough stupidity out there without the BBC amplifying it!
I’ve received the reply from the BBC complaints dept. which was pretty poor. So I’ve complained about the complaint response saying,
“In response to my complaint ref.CAS-2098037-HKZ3, inaccuracies and bias concerning the evidence of climate change were given.
There is no serious debate that man-made climate change is happening, only propaganda and denial from the fossil fuel industry and it’s cronies (BBC?).
During the interview, David did not deepen the debate, he simply made scientifically proven untrue statements. The opposing claims come from vested interests and by repeating their fictitious arguments clearly shows bias which has no basis in reality.
You are meant to be a responsible broadcasting organisation and by failing to make factual reports, showing obvious bias and failing to take a responsible attitude towards a threat greater than terrorism, you are not fulfilling your responsibility or role.”
Thanks for the feedback Pete!