The BBC can't win on climate change (original) (raw)

Earth. Mostly Harmless. Photograph: Soeren Stache/EPA

The BBC was yesterday defending itself against viewers who said its coverage of Al Gore's Live Earth party at Wembley gave both far too little and far too much credence to alternative ideas about the causes of climate change.

But the Beeb has always found it hard to square the science with its own impartiality. After years of omitting to mention the phenomenon, making sure that programmes about the natural world ignored the elephant in the living room, from the mid-1990s until quite recently it interpreted impartiality as giving equal time to opposing views.

This began to look absurd as the consensus of global scientific opinion emerged that climate change was not only happening but that human activity was a major cause. The BBC was accused of distorting the debate by airing the views of a few dissenting scientists, so changed tack again.

Its news coverage now more or less reflects the scientific consensus and few programmes feel obliged to present the debate in equal terms. However, there are many in the BBC who find it hard to understand that a commitment to air all sides of a debate can challenge impartiality; that it is possible to do a disservice to the public by presenting every minority shade of opinion.

Several programmes still wheel out the sceptics. Some, such as David Baddiel, are contrarians; others, such as Jeremy Clarkson, are libertarians and Alan Titchmarsh can be climate-sceptical one day and not the next.

In sum, the BBC more or less reflects the national lack of consensus - the fact that nearly 40% of us are still unconvinced that humans are involved. Some would say the BBC has largely determined this state of ignorance, but, of course, some would say the opposite.