Rupert Wyndham, renowned for his acerbic, accurate, and pointed analysis of the climate fraud, has NAILED the BBC (AND Griffie et al), in a brilliant letter to Lord Hall over ethics… (Fairfax, NZ Horrid, TV One and TV 3 take note):
26 March 2015
Lord Hall
Director General
BBC White City Media Centre
201 Wood Lane
London W12 7TQ.
Director General
BBC White City Media Centre
201 Wood Lane
London W12 7TQ.
Dear Lord Hall
Last week the BBC aired an interview with a recent graduate from the University of Oxford, by chance my own alma mater. This young man, it transpired, represented a covey of similarly minded contemporaries. They were driven by a desire to pressurize the trustees of the university finances to divest its portfolio of shares in fossil fuel extractors across the spectrum. With evident, and rather obnoxiously self-preening, satisfaction, he declared this to be ‘an ethical issue’. Given the BBC’s fastidious standards in this regard, no doubt it collectively, as well as you personally, would agree. So, indeed, would I, albeit not be for reasons that would appeal either to your interviewee or to the Corporation.
Let me begin with a simple, and surely an incontrovertible, proposition. It is that the abundant availability of fossil fuels, combined with the wit that has allowed human beings to exploit them, is the greatest blessing ever to have been visited upon the species. After all, without them no BBC at all and no University of Oxford – well, at least not as to be recognisable today. So then, what are the ethical issues that should, but plainly don’t, exercise either this callow youth or the state broadcaster? Here are a few suggestions. In the interests of reasonable comprehensiveness, this may occupy space. On the other hand, the issues are important (the defining challenge of the times, according to the BBC and its mentors), so we should not be niggardly.
So when the BBC:
• Routinely ignores its own Editorial Standards (as it happens, legal requirements), that is an ethical issue;
• Proceeds in the comforting knowledge that its political masters will not hold it to account, that is an ethical issue;
• Subverts the accepted meaning of language in order to generate a spurious justification for institutional bias, that is an ethical issue;
• Claims that its much vaunted impartiality has been ‘calibrated’ on the advice of a specially convened assembly of experts, that is an ethical issue;
• Subsequently spends large quantities of licence fee payers’ money seeking to avoid disclosing the composition of that convocation, that is an ethical issue;
• Has, as it later transpires, lied repeatedly about the accreditation of attendees, that is an ethical issue;
• Is in possession of information indicating gross malfeasance within the climate change community, which for weeks it deliberately suppresses, that is an ethical issue;
• Rejects the findings of an independent committee, set up by itself, to rule on its own impartiality, that is an ethical issue;
• Later, in order to justify its propagandist line, accepts on demonstrably spurious grounds the opposing verdict of a paid lapdog scientist, that is an ethical issue;
• Subsequently, and for years, deliberately and willfully ignores rivers of evidence and reports from unimpeachable sources which run counter to its prevailing orthodoxy, that is an ethical issue;
• Continues to give currency to demonstrable misinformation generated by vested interests, that is an ethical issue;
• By silent acquiescence lends its authority to false and defamatory slurs aimed at eminent scientists who question its prevailing orthodoxy, that is an ethical issue;
• Establishes a complaints procedure which, on artificial and synthetic grounds, is carefully designed to reject all objections to its prevailing orthodoxy, however well attested, that is an ethical issue.
• Proceeds in the comforting knowledge that its political masters will not hold it to account, that is an ethical issue;
• Subverts the accepted meaning of language in order to generate a spurious justification for institutional bias, that is an ethical issue;
• Claims that its much vaunted impartiality has been ‘calibrated’ on the advice of a specially convened assembly of experts, that is an ethical issue;
• Subsequently spends large quantities of licence fee payers’ money seeking to avoid disclosing the composition of that convocation, that is an ethical issue;
• Has, as it later transpires, lied repeatedly about the accreditation of attendees, that is an ethical issue;
• Is in possession of information indicating gross malfeasance within the climate change community, which for weeks it deliberately suppresses, that is an ethical issue;
• Rejects the findings of an independent committee, set up by itself, to rule on its own impartiality, that is an ethical issue;
• Later, in order to justify its propagandist line, accepts on demonstrably spurious grounds the opposing verdict of a paid lapdog scientist, that is an ethical issue;
• Subsequently, and for years, deliberately and willfully ignores rivers of evidence and reports from unimpeachable sources which run counter to its prevailing orthodoxy, that is an ethical issue;
• Continues to give currency to demonstrable misinformation generated by vested interests, that is an ethical issue;
• By silent acquiescence lends its authority to false and defamatory slurs aimed at eminent scientists who question its prevailing orthodoxy, that is an ethical issue;
• Establishes a complaints procedure which, on artificial and synthetic grounds, is carefully designed to reject all objections to its prevailing orthodoxy, however well attested, that is an ethical issue.
The list is long. It could be longer.
But let us expand this young man’s horizons a little beyond merely the shortcomings of the BBC. He – and, indeed, the BBC – might, for example, consider some/all of the following:
When scientists, or those claiming to be, concoct evidence, that is an ethical issue.
When they ‘homogenise’ data, that is an ethical issue.
When they refuse to expose their data to verification by the wider scientific community, that is an ethical issue.
When they ‘homogenise’ data, that is an ethical issue.
When they refuse to expose their data to verification by the wider scientific community, that is an ethical issue.
