Is the Beeb's science coverage one sided?

There is certainly enough doubt for the BBC Trust to announce an investigation.Starting this spring,the trust will be carrying out an impartiality test.

One programme that may have triggered the move was David Attenborough's How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? which coincided with the Copenhagen climate meeting and was criticised as being one sided.

Richard Tait, BBC Trustee and Chair of the Trust's Editorial Standards Committee (ESC), said:

Science is an area of great importance to licence fee payers, which provokes strong reaction and covers some of the most sensitive editorial issues the BBC faces. Heated debate in recent years around topics like climate change, GM crops and the MMR vaccine reflects this, and BBC reporting has to steer a course through these controversial issues while remaining impartial.

The trust will report in 2011

Impartiality or viewing figures?

So the Beeb have dropped plans to have a day of saving the planet in the face of critisism of impartiality.

But is that really the case or could it be more to do with the awful viewing figures that Live Earth had?

Update Peter Preston writes in Media Guardian

Of course viewers - 81% of them when the BBC asked - want impartiality, just like motherhood, apple pie and a Euro-vote they'd probably be too busy to cast on the day. But the reality of viewing or voting figures is quite different. A million souls watch Newsnight as it fails to save the planet; about 59.5 million others are asleep, glued to Sky or working. The restraints on coverage, nodding heads from "our Westminster studio", automatically limit the scope of such coverage. Equal time doesn't mean equal interest.

Climate of fear

The BBC has taken a lot of flak this weekend from Edinburgh.Firstly Jeremy Paxman,in the equivilent of a verbal machine gunning thinks the corporation could find it difficult to justify its continued license fee funding.Anna Ford then makes a broadshot at the bows saying that there is a climate of fear at the BBC.


Now two of its senior people question its support and promotion of climate change


"Surely it is not the job of the BBC to save the planet?" asks Newsnight's editor Peter Barron,and Head of news Peter Horrocks says

I absolutely don't think we should do that because it's not impartial. It's not our job to lead people and proselytise about it."

The Mail is running a story this morning from the Newsnight editor

According to the paper

The editor of Newsnight hit out yesterday at the BBC's stance on climate change.

Peter Barron said it was "not the corporation's job to save the planet".
He said the BBC was going beyond its remit by planning an entire day of programmes dedicated to highlighting environmental worries.
In remarks that will embarrass his bosses, Mr Barron said: "If the BBC is thinking about campaigning on climate change, then that is wrong and not our job.
"People are understandably interested in this, but it is absolutely not the BBC's job to save the planet. There are a lot of people who think that, but it must be stopped."

Liberalism and status quo

I have just listened to Radio 4's Talking politics talking about BBC impartiality.An interesting discusion between Adrian Monck,David Cox and Robert Aitken.

Aitken. who wrote the book," Can we trust the BBC" reflects on his time there that he was a lone voice in any denial of Eurosceptisism stating that journalists rarely stray outside the liberal tradition .

A point emphasised by David Cox who said that in particular there was a mindset for sympathy with Euro integration and anti racism.He felt that there was a lack of intellectual thought within the corporation.Something that Helen Boaden did'nt except.It was put to here in particular that this anti racism stance means that the BBC always treads carefully when it came to reporting terrorism raids for fear of offending the Muslim community. Helen cited recent investigations by Panorama

Monck says that there is a conventional wisdom and status quo position within the BBC and a reluctance to challenge enough of what we take for granted.He makes a good point at the end that if we don't like the BBC then there are plenty of other cahnnels to choose from.

From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel

What would you do if you worked at the BBC and :

1.The Rolling Stones offered you exclusivity to their last ever concert which was in aid of charity or

2. a women newsreader was getting married in a village in Pakistan with two correspondents as guests and Osama Bin Laden turns up.

These were some of the hypothesis given at a seminar last autumn and were designed to test its staff's attitudes impartiality.

The strange thing is that the BBC was never set up to be impartial.Its remit was to broadcast a range of programmes to the reasonable satisfaction of the Post Master General.
By the time of its first royal charter in 1926,it was allowed to collect "news and information relating to current events.......... that in any manner it felt fit to do"

Times have changed since the days of 2LO and monopoly broadcasting and the BBC Trust has produced a report on the corporation impartiality and its safeguarding thereof.

Its main conclusions and criticisms centre on its failure to promote proper debate on major political issues because of the inherent liberal culture of its staff.

In particular,what it describes as themed seasons and campaigns,come under scrutiny.
When the corporation gives too much publicity to the causes.it concludes that the BBC is not there "to give a free ride",and with the themed seasons,there is "potential for problems with a lack of clear editorial accountability.

The report,lengthy to say the least, produces 12 guiding principles for the corporation amongst which are:

• That impartiality should beside being a legal requirement be also a source of pride
• that it is an essential part of the contract with the audience/funders of the corporation
• in today's diverse cultural,political and social landscape,balanced political reporting is even more important
• that it covers the breathe of view and is not necessarily the middle ground
• impartiality should not lead to insipid programming

One particular occasion where impartiality may have been breached was the broadcast of the Live 8 concerts in 2005.It was a political campaign intended to excert pressure on the G8 meeting at Gleneagles.The BBC was forced to cull some of the between sets action as it was deemed to be almost urging the crowd into an anti BBC rage.

The Vicar of Dibley also comes in for criticism for promoting the same cause.The sitcom braodact in 2005 never made clear the link between its writer Richard Curtis and the make poverty history campaign.

Finally Citizen journalism and in particular the usage of UGC were flagged as issues for the future.The BBC has to balance its exclusivity against editorial control.