Just spent the last hour or so following a rather interesting story involving some of the BBC'ers recently suspended post
Director General Hara-Kiri Scapegoat Event -
El Reg
A list of attendees at a climate-change seminar the BBC has spent tens of thousands of pounds trying to keep secret has been unearthed on an internet archive. The listed names emerged after the publicly-funded broadcaster fought off requests for the list under freedom of information (FOI) laws. This surreal story is only tangentially about climate change: the disclosure raises questions about the evidence submitted to the information tribunal by the BBC and Helen Boaden - its director of news who "stepped aside" this week.
It would appear the BBC has been less that transparent about how it came to its editorial policy about Man Made Climate Change - El Reg again:
The seminar whose attendees the Beeb sought to keep secret was birthed by three organisation. In 2004, the International Broadcasting Trust - a lobby group funded by a number of charities, including many involved in campaigning on climate change - devised the first in a series of seminars on development issues, where the lobbyists could address broadcasters. One event on 26 January 2006 was a "brainstorm", in the IBT's own words, "focusing on climate change and its impact on development". The BBC sent 28 senior staff, and 28 outsiders were invited. The event was also organised by CMEP, its second parent - a now dormant or defunct outfit operated by BBC reporter Roger Harrabin and climate activist Dr Joe Smith, and once funded by the Tyndall Centre at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and pressure groups.
....The third parent of the seminar was the BBC.....
Normally such a talking-shop would have no great significance. The 2006 seminar, however, subsequently became very important indeed. The following year a thoughtful BBC Trust report on impartiality cited the discussion there and said it had settled the argument - as far as the BBC was concerned - on climate change.
Filmmaker John Bridcut wrote:
The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts [our emphasis] and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus [on anthropogenic climate change].
The BBC is under a statutory obligation to remain impartial, so this gave the "brainstorm" a historic significance: the BBC has not previously abandoned impartiality in peacetime.
You could just imagine the hoo-ha if something like this had been done for oil and gas company lobbyists!
The FOI request has been pursued by a blogger,
Tony Newbery, who had smelled the original rat. Anyway, the net effect was that the judges agreed with the BBC to quash the FOI request, despite it being a request for data about a meeting funded by licence payers money that determined editorial policy in an area which is (to say the least) under some debate, and has already been shown to have some
dodgy email stuff going on. (And it appears the judges were
hardly impartial...)
Same Old same Old, the cynics among you may say....but in this case the Internet came to the rescue, as it appears that the data was once put on said 'Net, and of course was therefore findable by the Wayback Machine. And, quelle suprise, it reveals that this "panel of experts" could more accurately be described mainly as a "panel of lobbyists who we like" - no wonder the BBC was not keen to disclose the names. One wonders whether the BBC's army of lawyers had ever heard of the Wayback Machine, would've saved a lot of licence payer money in court! One also wonder what happens now - the FOI request has been quashed by The Law, but the Wayback Machine shows the information was - and still is - in the public domain anyway. But the ramifications of fighting FOI requests like this are...interesting. One immediately wonders now how many other editorial policies have been decided like this, behind closed doors by "Lobbyists we Like"?
More evidence, methinks, that a Director General of some 54 days tenure heroically falling on his sword is a total diversion from the real issues at play...
And the lesson - yet again - is that the only directly accessible protection or support that We The People are going to get from those people who want to hide things and do stuff away from public scrutiny is this here Internet thingy, which allows alert individuals to dig away and shine a light in murky areas. Protect it, its very precious.
