In the last two years I have found myself becoming more and more critical of the BBC. Not least, I felt that they had succumbed too easily to the immense pressure applied on them by Tony Blair’s government over the issue of false evidence being given by the government to the British public regarding weapons of mass destruction as a preliminary to the Iraq invasion. The 2004 Hutton Inquiry and the subsequent Report raised questions about the BBC's journalistic standards and its impartiality from which it has taken a long time to recover.
Today I’m going to praise the BBC.
They have written thoughtfully and intelligently about the nature of "fair and balanced" journalism. They have done so in relation to the issue of climate change and, in particular, their treatment of climate sceptics. In doing this, they also present some thought provoking discussion that has much wider application about the whole nature of independent, balanced and measured reporting.
It seems particularly relevant as we consider the new and difficult challenges facing Markos as he moves from writing on an advocacy internet site into the complex mainstream media, where a different approach to engage a broader band of readership might be required.
The article was written for the in-house journal of the BBC. This is a fascinating periodical involving some serious navel gazing about the often contradictory demands involved in their fulfilment of their unique role "to inform, educate and entertain" whilst meeting their Charter requirements of sustaining citizenship and civil society; promoting education and learning; stimulating creativity and cultural excellence; representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities; bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK.
If I quote extensively from the article, I feel that the BBC will accept this, as this diary is one of commendation and I do pay my licence fee! I do recommend that you read it in full, however, if you are at all interested in the nature of fair journalistic practice and how this can be translated into the reality of the printed or broadcast media.
The discussion arose because "Richard Black, our website environment correspondent, has been tackling an ambitious challenge he set himself earlier this year. He wanted to get a better understanding of what so-called "climate sceptics" think, what arguments or evidence they have to counter the view that human activities such as industrial emissions of greenhouse gases and deforestation are bringing potentially dangerous changes to the Earth's climate"
His dilemma was simple. The overwhelming weight of opinion (in most parts of the world) had shifted to recognise climate change was a fact, as was the human contribution to this disaster. Yet there is still a vociferous opinion challenging what had become now so widely accepted, not least in the United States. If he was to "inform and educate", what was the proper balance to give to this opposition and to properly and fairly recognise their views when it went against mainstream scientific opinion. In his words:
They do a great deal to shed light on the arguments and investigate the evidence behind them. We wanted to give them proper consideration, in part to counter accusations that we simply ignore the sceptics’ views. But this also raises issues about how much weight, over time, we should give to their views, and what impartiality means on an issue like this.
He amplifies this:
Back in the 1980s the battleground was defined in caricature as bi-polar, with naive lentil-eaters on one side and ruthless big business on the other. But in the new reality the centre ground in climate science, economics, politics and business has shifted seismically, leaving us struggling sometimes to locate a new core of impartiality. We are still living with criticism over our coverage of MMR [the controversy over the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine] when we gave the impression that each side was underpinned by science of approximately equal weight. We must get it right on climate.
This is the heart of the debate. It has been much discussed on Dkos. It affects all aspects of journalism. Time and time again we argue on here that fair and balanced discussion is not giving two opposing views equal time and equal advocacy when the weight of the argument is not equal. A journalist must always consciously assess the relative merits and reflect this in his writing. To do otherwise is to mislead the readership. The same applies to public administrators. For example, Creationism and Evolution are not two equally balanced perspectives. They are simply two different opinions. To give them both visibility may be "fair" but to ignore the underlying science is not giving them proper balance.
So how does the BBC read the current situaton in the climate change debate? They are unequivocal:
In the new reality, there is all-party agreement in Westminster for the UK to cut CO2 emissions by at least 60 percent; climate change has become a dominant theme at the Davos business forum; people round the world are expressing alarm about the climate; a recent survey showed a majority in Britain now regard being concerned about the environment as a social norm.
A main reason for the shift in global opinion is the resolution of the most fundamental questions in climate science by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Earlier this year the IPCC concluded that it is beyond doubt that the climate is warming and more than 90 percent likely that human activities have driven most of the recent change. These findings will probably be underlined at this week’s meeting of the IPCC in Valencia and should feature prominently in our reporting.
The IPCC is the world’s official climate change assessment forum. It relies on published research and peer-reviewed so its prognoses are inherently conservative. Its reports are by acknowledged leaders in their fields surveying thousands of pieces of evidence and employing the scientific method of sceptically testing hypotheses to reduce uncertainty.
The IPCC process is bloody, and some scientists are upset if they believe their work to be under-represented in the policymakers’ summaries that are vetted by the world's major governments. Sometimes politicians do try to sway IPCC conclusions but their endorsement of the final report means that all governments involved, including the US and Australia, agree that greenhouse gases should be cut. The disagreement is over how much emissions should be cut, how soon, and by whom.
In a recent survey of 140 climate scientists, 18 percent found the IPCC too alarming but 82 percent either thought the IPCC represented a reasonable consensus – or said it was not alarming enough. No one agreed with the statement that global warming is a fabrication and that human activity is not having a significant effect. All the world’s major scientific bodies have endorsed the IPCC concerns about the risk of increasing greenhouse gases.
Richard Black defines the groups that are sceptical into the following:
On one side of the IPCC are some knowledgeable, sceptical climate scientists. They mostly agree that the Earth is heating, and agree that greenhouse gases are probably contributing. But they think future temperatures will be determined much more by solar changes than atmospheric changes – and they do not think IPCC computer models are smart enough to forecast the climate accurately. They mostly think the economic benefit of using fossil fuels outweighs the risk of increasing CO2 levels.
A more extreme position is taken by some libertarian commentators who distrust government and big institutions and who characterise climate change as a swindle. Their views appear to be supported by hardly any climate scientists.
Then there are the ‘sceptics’ (particularly in the US) funded by big business to run ‘think tanks’ spreading uncertainty and thus delaying action. We need to think hard about how and when we invite these various groups to contribute to the debate. Would we, for instance, serve our audiences by inviting lobbyists for tobacco firms to challenge the scientific links between smoking and lung cancer?
I have altered the sequence of his argument but his conclusion is quite clear (my own emphasis added):
Given the weight of opinion building up around the IPCC it makes sense for us to focus our coverage on the consensus that climate change is happening, is serious, but is manageable if tackled urgently.
We do not need consistently to ‘balance’ the reports of the IPCC. When we broadcast outlying views we should make sure we do not over represent them and we should keep a rough balance of views from either side of the IPCC. If we do not, we will distort the issue and risk misleading or confusing our audience.
We must also be more savvy about the way we treat outlying views – and we should make it clear to our audience when an interviewee holds a minority position.
I was pleased that Richard Black broadened his article at the end, because the subject of what journalism is, and what role it should play in society, needs to be more adequately discussed than our kneejerk reaction to the "so-called mainstream media" often allows:
We should confidently take these debates forward, with a modern, accurate sense of impartiality in mind. This will help us to follow the BBC Trust’s goal of engaging people as citizens as well as audiences, and it will maximise the BBC’s unique contribution to an informed democracy.