BBC Trust: From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel: Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st Century, June 2007
Climate change is another subject where dissenters can be unpopular. There may be now a broad scientific consensus that climate change is definitely happening, and that it is at least predominantly man-made. But the second part of that consensus still has some intelligent and articulate opponents, even if a small minority.
Jana Bennett, Director of Television, argued at the seminar that ‘as journalists, we have the duty to understand where the weight of the evidence has got to. And that is an incredibly important thing in terms of public understanding - equipping citizens, informing the public as to what’s going to happen or not happen possibly over the next couple of hundred years.’
Roger Mosey, Director of Sport, said that in his former job as head of TV News, he had been lobbied by scientists ‘about what they thought was a disproportionate number of people denying climate change getting on our airwaves and being part of a balanced discussion - because they believe, absolutely sincerely, that climate change is now scientific fact.
The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus. But these dissenters (or even sceptics) will still be heard, as they should, because it is not the BBC’s role to close down this debate. They cannot be simply dismissed as ‘flat-earthers’ or ‘deniers’, who ‘should not be given a platform’ by the BBC. Impartiality always requires a breadth of view: for as long as minority opinions are coherently and honestly expressed, the BBC must give them appropriate space. ‘Bias by elimination’ is even more offensive today than it was in 1926. The BBC has many public purposes of both ambition and merit - but joining campaigns to save the planet is not one of them. The BBC’s best contribution is to increase public awareness of the issues and possible solutions through impartial and accurate programming.
Acceptance of a basic scientific consensus only sharpens the need for hawk-eyed scrutiny of the arguments surrounding both causation and solution. It remains important that programme-makers relish the full range of debate that such a central and absorbing subject offers, scientifically, politically and ethically, and avoid being misrepresented as standard-bearers. The wagon wheel remains a model shape. But the trundle of the bandwagon is not a model sound.
Recent history is littered with examples of where the mainstream has moved away from the prevailing consensus. Monetarism was regarded in the mid-1970s as an eccentric, impractical enthusiasm of right-wing economists - today it is a central feature of every British government’s economic policy. Euro-scepticism was once belittled as a small-minded, blinkered view of extremists on both left and right: today it is a powerful and influential force which has put pro-Europeans under unaccustomed pressure.
Multiculturalism was for years seen by many in Britain as the only respectable policy for managing the problems posed by immigration - over the past two years it has been much harder to find people in public life who support it. Programme-makers need to treat areas of consensus with proper scepticism and rigour. So often those in the media who think they are in the mainstream find that the river of public discourse has cut a new channel, and left them stranded in ox-bow lakes.
Breadth of view extends beyond radio and television programmes themselves. Content-providers now aim to extend their impact with ancillary multi-media content, creating ‘media ripples’ in the shape of chat, blogs, fan sites, reviews and so on. The BBC’s policy on its own website is, in the interests of impartiality, to refer people to other relevant websites without making value-judgments, provided that the websites concerned are of dependable and accountable provenance, and not in breach of the law.
‘If broadcasting is to present a reflection of its time, it must include matters which are in dispute. If it is to hold public interest, it must express living thought. If it is to educate public opinion, it must look upon the questions of the hour from many angles.’ Range and relevance were priorities too for the Ullswater Committee, as it considered the first renewal of the BBC’s Charter in 1936.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/18_06_07impartialitybbc.pdf
