Saturday, January 12, 2013
To BBC Director General Tony Hall - an Open Letter
This is up on ThinkScotland. Please put any comments there. It went to the BBC on 23rd November. No reply has been received.I have underlined the reference to the Freedom of Information Act - since the appropriate period has now passed - 20 working days - the BBC are clearly in breach of the law & the matter is being passed to the Scottish Information Commissioner who will doubtless decide that enforcement of the law does not apply to such bodies.
Dear Lord Tony Hall as BBC Director General,
It is now 11 days since the list of what the BBC had repeatedly referred to as 28 "leading scientists" able to give you the "best scientific advice" on alleged catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) went viral on the blogsphere (colloquially known as 28gate).
In the intervening time the BBC have made not disputed the accuracy of the list which shows only 2 of them to be honestly describable as "scientists" by the normal definition of science. Even they were known to be paid to promote the warming scare which, for any journalists of integrity would show they could not be relied on to be unbiased. The rest are a mixture of political "environmentalist activists", all or almost all, paid to be so; civil servants, including one from the US embassy, salesmen for the subsidy dependent "renewables" industry - such subsidy being dependent on belief in CAGW; and "international development" operatives with little or no direct knowledge of either science or alleged CAGW.
I trust you will not dispute it would be difficult to think of any group less like "leading scientists" or able to speak in an informed and unbiased way on the subject than the ones you chose to present as such.
We must, nonetheless, in light of the fact that the BBC lied for years about the fact; spent probably hundreds of thousands of pounds in lawyer's fees to prevent the truth being revealed to the public by an FoI; and at least encouraged your lawyers and witnesses to maintain to the court the claim that this was the best "scientific" advice and have not apologised for it, that this continues to represent the very highest standard of honesty to which the BBC aspire.
To quote the comparatively tame James Delingpole in the Telegraph in something with which the BBC has not and presumably cannot disagree
It can't be said often enough: this is a scandal far more significant than either the Jimmy Savile affair or the Lord McAlpine fiasco. Why? Because those first two were (mostly) cock-ups whereas this one is definitely a cynical and deliberate conspiracy by an institutionally corrupt organisation which has got far too big for its boots.
I would also add that since the additions to our energy bills caused by a scare you promoted on claims you knew to be false have pushed Britain into recession and play a major part in the excess winter death, now rising to 27,000 a year, this scandal is, by the most simple and modest arithmetic, thousands of times worse than the Savile case.
I would like to give you the opportunity to express some regret for lying.
I would also like to give the BBC the opportunity to express regret for the obscene and wholly dishonest accusations you have made against every person in Britain who doubts we are experiencing CAGW. Accusations mirroring, or slightly worse than the lies you broadcast about Lord McAlpine, and maintained for far longer.
Under the Freedom of Information Act I would like to know what specific criteria were used at the time to select each of the non-scientists for your panel of the country's alleged "leading scientists" and any emails or letters discussing the selection? That is all but Lord May and Dahl-Jensen. In particular I am interested in the choice of an inordinate number of "aid" agents and the US embassy official. Since this is entirely a matter of discussion between management & production staff the get out clause of protecting journalistic sources, used so often by the BBC, should not apply. I would also like to know if anybody at the BBC told witnesses or council to tell the court that this was a genuine meeting of scientists to give scientific advice when the entire organisation knew (from 2006 when it happened onwards) that it wasn't?
I note that despite the exposing of the fact that your official reason for bias and censorship, in a total breach of your legal duty of "balance" the BBC continues to push the catastrophic warming scare without allowing dissenters to be broadcast.
Of course the BBC has consistently, for at least many years, treated this legal duty as the smokescreen for propaganda governments have clearly intended it to be.
Even the BBC has repeatedly refused to deny, or defend, your censorship of racial genocide by British forces. One example, though not the worst is the continuous censorship, for over 13 years of any mention whatsoever of the Dragodan Massacre of over 200 civilians in Kosovo, which I have quizzed you about many times. Just as Joseph "big lie" Goebbels suppressed reporting of Auschwitz the BBC also suppresses news of genocide, though without the legal support of wartime censorship rules.
This is easily enough to establish a trend of Goebbels like behaviour over a very wide, indeed almost unrelated, range of subjects, over an extremely long period, of censoring in the Nazi and other causes.
Lord Hall should you personally disapprove of such behaviour, rather than having been appointed because your attitude to dishonesty, censorship and indeed genocide fits closely to what the entire organisation has previously demonstrated, I assume you will quickly fire all those who have thus abused their position.
I request a reply and would be obliged to have it within the next 72 hours. Should you wish to say that anything I have said is not factually accurate I assume you will let me know by then.
Neil Craig
Posted on Friday. I did not expect a reply because the BBC rarely reply to customer complaints when they are well founded.
The story continues to gather a following online. Tony Newbery reports "if I type ‘my name’ + BBC + seminar" into Google, it yields over 3 million hits. The BBC has, unsurprisingly, so far, censored any reporting of it. The traditional press has unfortunately shown more sympathy with the BBC, which is slowing public awareness but, in this day and age, cannot stop it.
It was covered in depth in the press by James Delingpole, Melanie Phillips, Christopher Booker and in Monday's Scotsman by Brian Monteith but otherwise not widely. Probably the best single reporting of it was on The Register.
It may be argued, comparing it with the coverage of Savile, that this merely shows that the press is more interested in stories of sex and/or celebrity rather than that they are kowtowing to those in power but either way I think it is unwise. The internet can already report news far faster than the press but the real reason for the decline of newspapers owes more to the fact that, as both Hearst and Orwell said “News is something somebody doesn't want printed; all else is advertising.” If that is true who is going to buy a newspaper for news, rather than read the net.
If Tony Newbery's assessment is correct and it certainly fits the facts Tony Hall is absolutely not the person to reform the BBC but to encoutage it to close its eyes. "Now we have a Director General designate who, in March next year, will pick up the threads of his long and very successful career at the BBC after a spell working elsewhere. An old hand returning to the scene of former triumphs and no doubt easing himself back into the cosy culture that he knows so well.
It seems not to have occurred to Lord Patten that it is precisely this BBC culture that has caused all the problems of the past decade. In the Wagon Wheel report, published five years ago, John Bridcut identified the rather smug, metropolitan, university educated, young and liberal mindset that besets BBC management and ensures that, in many ways, the organisation is out of step with its audience. Anyone who has had experience of the BBC complaints process will be all too familiar with the organisation’s infuriatingly arrogant attitude to its audience. Auntie is always right, and those who don’t think so are either misguided, undereducated, fools or malicious and ungrateful troublemakers, probably of a right wing persuasion.
If ever the BBC really needed an outsider to come in, turn things upside-down, and clean house, it is now. The age that spawned the BBC culture that Entwistle represented, and Hall is now expected to restore and perpetuate, is well and truly over."
Indeed. More to come surely.
-----------------------------------------Dear Lord Tony Hall as BBC Director General,
It is now 11 days since the list of what the BBC had repeatedly referred to as 28 "leading scientists" able to give you the "best scientific advice" on alleged catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) went viral on the blogsphere (colloquially known as 28gate).
In the intervening time the BBC have made not disputed the accuracy of the list which shows only 2 of them to be honestly describable as "scientists" by the normal definition of science. Even they were known to be paid to promote the warming scare which, for any journalists of integrity would show they could not be relied on to be unbiased. The rest are a mixture of political "environmentalist activists", all or almost all, paid to be so; civil servants, including one from the US embassy, salesmen for the subsidy dependent "renewables" industry - such subsidy being dependent on belief in CAGW; and "international development" operatives with little or no direct knowledge of either science or alleged CAGW.
I trust you will not dispute it would be difficult to think of any group less like "leading scientists" or able to speak in an informed and unbiased way on the subject than the ones you chose to present as such.
We must, nonetheless, in light of the fact that the BBC lied for years about the fact; spent probably hundreds of thousands of pounds in lawyer's fees to prevent the truth being revealed to the public by an FoI; and at least encouraged your lawyers and witnesses to maintain to the court the claim that this was the best "scientific" advice and have not apologised for it, that this continues to represent the very highest standard of honesty to which the BBC aspire.
To quote the comparatively tame James Delingpole in the Telegraph in something with which the BBC has not and presumably cannot disagree
It can't be said often enough: this is a scandal far more significant than either the Jimmy Savile affair or the Lord McAlpine fiasco. Why? Because those first two were (mostly) cock-ups whereas this one is definitely a cynical and deliberate conspiracy by an institutionally corrupt organisation which has got far too big for its boots.
I would also add that since the additions to our energy bills caused by a scare you promoted on claims you knew to be false have pushed Britain into recession and play a major part in the excess winter death, now rising to 27,000 a year, this scandal is, by the most simple and modest arithmetic, thousands of times worse than the Savile case.
I would like to give you the opportunity to express some regret for lying.
I would also like to give the BBC the opportunity to express regret for the obscene and wholly dishonest accusations you have made against every person in Britain who doubts we are experiencing CAGW. Accusations mirroring, or slightly worse than the lies you broadcast about Lord McAlpine, and maintained for far longer.
Under the Freedom of Information Act I would like to know what specific criteria were used at the time to select each of the non-scientists for your panel of the country's alleged "leading scientists" and any emails or letters discussing the selection? That is all but Lord May and Dahl-Jensen. In particular I am interested in the choice of an inordinate number of "aid" agents and the US embassy official. Since this is entirely a matter of discussion between management & production staff the get out clause of protecting journalistic sources, used so often by the BBC, should not apply. I would also like to know if anybody at the BBC told witnesses or council to tell the court that this was a genuine meeting of scientists to give scientific advice when the entire organisation knew (from 2006 when it happened onwards) that it wasn't?
I note that despite the exposing of the fact that your official reason for bias and censorship, in a total breach of your legal duty of "balance" the BBC continues to push the catastrophic warming scare without allowing dissenters to be broadcast.
Of course the BBC has consistently, for at least many years, treated this legal duty as the smokescreen for propaganda governments have clearly intended it to be.
Even the BBC has repeatedly refused to deny, or defend, your censorship of racial genocide by British forces. One example, though not the worst is the continuous censorship, for over 13 years of any mention whatsoever of the Dragodan Massacre of over 200 civilians in Kosovo, which I have quizzed you about many times. Just as Joseph "big lie" Goebbels suppressed reporting of Auschwitz the BBC also suppresses news of genocide, though without the legal support of wartime censorship rules.
This is easily enough to establish a trend of Goebbels like behaviour over a very wide, indeed almost unrelated, range of subjects, over an extremely long period, of censoring in the Nazi and other causes.
Lord Hall should you personally disapprove of such behaviour, rather than having been appointed because your attitude to dishonesty, censorship and indeed genocide fits closely to what the entire organisation has previously demonstrated, I assume you will quickly fire all those who have thus abused their position.
I request a reply and would be obliged to have it within the next 72 hours. Should you wish to say that anything I have said is not factually accurate I assume you will let me know by then.
Neil Craig
Posted on Friday. I did not expect a reply because the BBC rarely reply to customer complaints when they are well founded.
The story continues to gather a following online. Tony Newbery reports "if I type ‘my name’ + BBC + seminar" into Google, it yields over 3 million hits. The BBC has, unsurprisingly, so far, censored any reporting of it. The traditional press has unfortunately shown more sympathy with the BBC, which is slowing public awareness but, in this day and age, cannot stop it.
It was covered in depth in the press by James Delingpole, Melanie Phillips, Christopher Booker and in Monday's Scotsman by Brian Monteith but otherwise not widely. Probably the best single reporting of it was on The Register.
It may be argued, comparing it with the coverage of Savile, that this merely shows that the press is more interested in stories of sex and/or celebrity rather than that they are kowtowing to those in power but either way I think it is unwise. The internet can already report news far faster than the press but the real reason for the decline of newspapers owes more to the fact that, as both Hearst and Orwell said “News is something somebody doesn't want printed; all else is advertising.” If that is true who is going to buy a newspaper for news, rather than read the net.
If Tony Newbery's assessment is correct and it certainly fits the facts Tony Hall is absolutely not the person to reform the BBC but to encoutage it to close its eyes. "Now we have a Director General designate who, in March next year, will pick up the threads of his long and very successful career at the BBC after a spell working elsewhere. An old hand returning to the scene of former triumphs and no doubt easing himself back into the cosy culture that he knows so well.
It seems not to have occurred to Lord Patten that it is precisely this BBC culture that has caused all the problems of the past decade. In the Wagon Wheel report, published five years ago, John Bridcut identified the rather smug, metropolitan, university educated, young and liberal mindset that besets BBC management and ensures that, in many ways, the organisation is out of step with its audience. Anyone who has had experience of the BBC complaints process will be all too familiar with the organisation’s infuriatingly arrogant attitude to its audience. Auntie is always right, and those who don’t think so are either misguided, undereducated, fools or malicious and ungrateful troublemakers, probably of a right wing persuasion.
If ever the BBC really needed an outsider to come in, turn things upside-down, and clean house, it is now. The age that spawned the BBC culture that Entwistle represented, and Hall is now expected to restore and perpetuate, is well and truly over."
Indeed. More to come surely.
This letter, on 28 gate, went out to another 55 papers as did the one under to the scotsman. Both are currently unpublished. That makes it 617 for zero published in the dead tree press. A total difficult to put down to random chance.
__________
The BBC have, for 6 years, justified breaking their Charter duty of "balance" over alleged catastrophic global warming by claiming that a symposium of "leading scientists". Or in the case of their news director's restimony in court "scientists with contrasting views".
In fact, 2 months ago almost to the day this list of contrasting leading scientists became public and it turned out that the BBC (& their news director's) claims were untrue. All but 2 weren't scientists at all. All of them were paid activists though strangely some were activists for "foreign aid" with no experien, even of promoting warming alarmism.
There were also representatives from the Church of England & to invoke higher authority, from the US embassy.
The BBC had, beyond dispute, lied continuously and deliberately to promote a catastrophic warming scare they knew to be, at least in large measure, false. And are still doing so.
For the subsequent 2 months the BBC has managed to continue reporting on alleged warming without ever mentioning this scandal.Until today when I mentioned it from a redio audience and was cut off with the words "I'm not censoring you but..."
Under what circumstances can any "news" from this organisation, or indeed the "environmental" movement which they assisted, ever again be assumed truthful.
______________
If the argument for the taxpayer having to fund the BBC relies on an assertion that only commercial companies produce populist programmes like X-Factor while the BBC do highbrow stuff like Strictly (letter Thurs) it may not persuade.
The more serious argument against the BBC is that recent World Bank report examined the role of government ownership of broadcasting. They found that the degree of ownership closely correlated with authoritarianism, corruption, government incompetence, national, poverty and even things like poor healthcare. In its way this is unsurprising - the argument for a free press has always been that it means that failure gets noticed and something is done. Britain has one of the highest levels of state ownership of broadcasting in the developed world and indeed in the English speaking world.
The recent 28 gate scandal, reported in the Scotsman by Brian Monteith & which has gone viral online, but never reported on BBC news, shows that for 6 years the BBC have deliberately lied about having the support of 28 scientists (they were carefully selected activists, only 2 of the 28 were scientists) for their decision to break their lawful Charter duty of "balance" by censoring news and banning dissidents to promote the government's global warming scare.
If the BBC is willing to lie and censor to promote government scare stories, which the government itself has spent £10s of billions "raising awareness" of, & which they know to be, at least in great measure, false, then the case for abolishing the BBC is the case for freedom and democracy in Britain.
Ref - Report on effects of state control of media http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTWDRS/Resources/477365-1257315064764/2423_djankov.pdf
Labels: BBC, global warming, ThinkScotland, Unpublished letters
