Another strange one tonight relates to a piece today at Bishop Hill.
The tactics of the less reputable members of the environmental fraternity has long been to prevent any sort of industrial activity by making the cost of policing their protests so high as to wear public opinion into submission. One has to say that this approach has not been entirely unsuccessful.
It was interesting then to see the comments of Mr Justice Gilbart in rejecting FrackFree Balcombe's application for judicial review of West Sussex Council's decision to allow planning permission to the Cuadrilla project. There is a BBC report of the hearing here, but strangely the news of its rejection doesn't seem to have made the cut.
The implication here is of pro-environmentalist bias from the BBC.
Here's a screengrab of the BBC article linked to at Bishop Hill, date-stamped 6 November:
Now, this may seem to be just a simple case of an article being missed by a blogger, because - checking the BBC website - the BBC did actually report the rejection of FrackFree Balcombe's application three day's ago:
...but the BBC isn't out of the woods here. Far from it.
Bishop Hill quotes at some length from the judge's ruling and concludes:
This is utterly damning of the environmentalists' approach. You can see why the BBC would want to give it a miss.
And, guess what, the BBC did give that ruling "a miss"! Their account doesn't quote a single word of it. Not one word.
Isn't that extraordinary?
Instead, we get post-verdict reactions from Friends of the Earth spokeswoman Brenda Pollack and FrackFree Balcombe Residents Association (FFBRA) spokeswoman Sue Taylor, both moaning about the ruling, and a county council spokesman welcoming the ruling but 'reassuring residents' that no fracking had been proposed or approved - a sample I'd describe as showing a pronounced pro-environmentalist bias.
Isn't that extraordinary?
Instead, we get post-verdict reactions from Friends of the Earth spokeswoman Brenda Pollack and FrackFree Balcombe Residents Association (FFBRA) spokeswoman Sue Taylor, both moaning about the ruling, and a county council spokesman welcoming the ruling but 'reassuring residents' that no fracking had been proposed or approved - a sample I'd describe as showing a pronounced pro-environmentalist bias.
And as for the BBC article's three sub-headlines, well, they have to be seen to be believed:
Who wrote those? Caroline Lucas?'Flawed decision''Disappointing decision''Health risks'
A case of BBC pro-environmentalist bias then? I'd say that's an undeniable 'yes'.
On Today (today) Mishal Khan was again pushing her completely biased view that the UK was not doing enough to help Syrian refugees. I am not saying hers is an illegitimate viewpoint but she pushes it to the exclusion of all else.
ReplyDeleteNo one ever seems to ask pertinent questions e.g. would we just be letting in more would be potential Jihadis and supporters of Sharia, given that a large part of the opposition to Assad comes from the Muslim Brotherhood? That's just as relevant as Mishal Khan "Why don't we do more?"
Dan Read
Agreed, Dan. I think that's worth a post of its own.
DeleteOnly to be expected from the BBC.
ReplyDelete"Helping the Syrian refugees." That's rich. It seems creating refugees in Syria is less worthy of note. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/12/01/neo-americas-real-ties-to-isis/
ReplyDeleteOn a related note, Craig, have you seen Roger Harriban finally noticing that the "green energy" policies he's been championing for ages end up hurting the poorest and most vulnerable?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30404364
It's not the fault of the policies, of course. Apparently the nasty Tories aren't spending enough on energy efficiency initiatives, and people will have to reduce consumption. Shocking, I know. Maybe now the BBC will put back that line criticizing the green taxes and policies they oddly redacted from Mervyn King's statement.
Talking about Roger Harrabin, David...
DeleteHis Twitter feed is very peculiar. Take a look at it if you've got time.
Almost every story he tweets about he 'copies in' other people who, I'm guessing, he hopes might also cover the story. Geoffrey Lean at the 'Telegraph' is one such regular but, way more than anyone else, the man he loves to copy into this tweets is...
...George Monbiot.
His re-tweets and links are pretty much as you'd expect. The vanishingly rare exceptions, such as a recent link to a piece by Matt Ridley, are only done in order to disagree with the sceptic being cited.
https://twitter.com/rharrabin
That's a technique they teach at the BBC College of Journalism. No, I'm not kidding. I remember seeing something like that in one of Stuart "Taxi Boycott" Hughes' instructional videos on how to use social media for "journalism".
Delete