PJD wrote:SaigonSaddler wrote:PJD wrote:Interesting piece from an ex-science correspondent for BBC Radio, which is illuminating about the way the BBC reports on these sorts of issues
http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Whitehouse2009.htm
"Reporting the consensus about climate change (and we all know about the debate about what is a consensus in the IPCC era) is not synonymous with good science reporting. The BBC is at an important point. It has been narrow minded about climate change for many years and they have become at the very least a cliché and at worst lampooned as being predictable and biased by a public that doesn’t believe them anymore."
Opinionated babble.
I think it is interesting that when the BBC were publishing lines like "Scientists believe as many as half a million people could die from vCJD", there were people within the organisation that were being warned off publishing their own view, that this was not actually what the science showed, especially given the very small numbers that have subsequently died of the disease.
Given the recent hysterical coverage by the BBC on a range of issues such as vCJD, MMR vaccine, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Global Warming etc, etc (in fact is there any issue they don't report hysterically?) all of which have been found to be irresponsible scaremongering, I think it is the BBC's mainstream view which has been shown to be "opinionated babble".
Now for commercial news organisations I can understand, they live or die by their ratings, but the BBC is different, they are a public service broadcaster. What I want from my public service broadcaster (funded by all of us, regardless of ratings) is a balanced view of the facts, not scaremongering headlines, which on closer inspection have little to do with the science or the truth.
Are these the new kind of flu's that could potentially (key word) lead to the deaths of millions? 50 million by some estimates in 1918, 'only' 20 million in others. The science is not different between the two cases. The CJD and MMR has the potential to cause disaster in a few cases - which is OK for the mainstream but I'd like to be told of those facts before being exposed. Global warming is another case. While it may be 'cool' in the UTS garden for this to be mostly written off as some kind of scare-mongering drivel, the vast majority of other thinkers disagree. Ask yourself why the hell China/Brazil etc would think about attending even the most fringe conference on the issue if there wasn't a clear and present danger. Even the Bush admin finally caved.
While we may disagree on the details of reporting - all journalism is biased to some extent - case in point the wording of the questions in this 'poll'. The knee-jerk rejection of everything reported by the BBC is banal. The facts should be dissected in the cold light of day and then opinions formed, rather than immediate and permanent suspicion being cast on potential results of various factors, which the public broadcaster has a duty to report.