Sunday 18 October 2015

"Health warnings"



Following the BBC's fulsome apology over its broadcast of What is the point of the Met Office?, the corporation added the following to the programme's website:


Mr Lilley and Graham Stringer MP did indeed appear on the programme and, yes, they are both trustees of the Global Warming Policy Foundation

And now both have been made subject to what Peter Lilley calls "health warnings" by the BBC. 

A colleague of mine alerted me to the fact that they’d slapped disclaimers essentially branding my views invalid. 
My biggest concern is that the BBC breached the impartiality clause of its charter. 
I was asked my views on climate change and I expressed them. My opinion should not be banned from the airwaves. And they should not accompany my remarks with a health warning, saying that I’m outside the scientific consensus, which is untrue. 
Actually my views are within the range of views reported by the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC), albeit it at the less extreme end of the spectrum.
And this is the question he put to Lord Hall in a latter sent to the BBC's director-general:
Is the BBC now saying that anyone who takes a less than alarmist view of the likely rate of global warming is outside the scientific consensus and must be publicly labelled as unreliable or excluded from the airwaves? 
The answer seems to be 'yes', doesn't it?

Whether Peter Lilley or Graham Stringer's views are correct on this matter or not, it's an unusual situation, to say the least, isn't it, when the BBC publicly brands the views of two long-serving MPs as highly questionable?

1 comment:

  1. So they've been 'unpersonned' for being 'opponents of the consensus'. Funny how the BBC is a fierce defender of one scientific community while dismissing, say, the science behind GMOs. Both were created and are championed by people with vested interests, yet only one side holds the approved thoughts.

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