A quick audit of 'due weight' in the BBC's coverage of climate science
- 29 Nov 2012, 14:18
- Carbon Brief Staff
The BBC Trust has commended the corporation for making
"significant progress" in improving coverage of scientific issues
including climate change. We examine the trust's claim that a key
recommendation not to give equal weight to evidence and opinion is
now "already a factor" in planning its output.
Yesterday's BBC Trust report follows
a review
of the corporation's science coverage published just over two
years ago. That review, written by Professor Steve Jones of
University College London, contained a section on climate change
suggesting that the BBC's coverage of the issue is a "microcosm of
false balance" - where fringe scientific views are given equal
weight to mainstream scientific opinion.
In particular, Jones highlighted examples from BBC reporting
giving the impression that there are "two equally valid points of
view that must be sorted out" over whether climate change is
happening - despite the scientific evidence being, as he put it,
"overwhelming".
Jones proposed that in reporting science the BBC needs to
achieve "due weight" or "due impartiality" in its reporting. This
means conveying to audiences where the weight of scientific opinion
lies, while retaining space for discussing scientific
disagreement.
'Significant progress'
The BBC Trust said yesterday:
"The Trust commends the Executive for
the significant progress which has made since publication of the
Review in 2011. It is apparent that the Review has had an impact on
output and is likely to continue to do so."
It highlights a series of steps the corporation has taken
to that end. These include the appointment of new Science Editor
David Shukman, the creation of something called the 'pan-BBC
Science Forum', which has strategic oversight of science coverage,
and a science training programme for editors.
Of particular note is a section discussing primate research,
which is offered as evidence that 'due weight' is doing well at the
BBC:
"Professor Jones's recommendations on
'due weight' are already a factor in day-to-day decision-making.
For example, shortly after publication of the review, in July
2011, Newsnight's Science Editor reported on primate research.
For the live studio element she suggested that the programme
should run a discussion between two scientific perspectives on the
issue, instead of the traditional "pro" and "anti"
discussion."
Testing the premise
The primate example indicates some progress. But this
approach has been lacking in some of the corporation's coverage of
climate science.
Since the review was published, the BBC has produced some
cracking climate science reporting. David Attenborough's Frozen
Planet series stands out in particular. We have
noted a series of examples where exactly the model of "pro" and
"anti" discussion warned about here has been adopted in discussing
climate change, however. In these instances this kind of argument
has crowded out more substantive scientific discussion. Here are
some examples:
On the
Daily Politics show in June,
Telegraph blogger James Delingpole came on to debate with
Andrew Pendleton, Head of Campaigns at Friends of the Earth UK over
whether global temperature rise has stopped. The
segment, and a follow up discussion on presenter Andrew Neil's
blog, meant the question of how temperature rise is occurring
appeared as a debate between climate skeptics and believers, not an
area where there is broad scientific agreement.
Radio 5's Your Call breakfast show in July
asked: "Is the washout summer proof of
climate change?", before inviting climate skeptic and green
campaigners to debate whether a wet summer was "caused" by climate
change. In our experience scientists would take issue with this
question as being too simplistic. To further confuse the issue, as
part of the discussion, the presenter also introduced the fringe
idea that climate change is the result of sunspots.
A couple of days later, Today Programme presenter John
Humphrys interviewed climate scientist Ralph Cicerone on the Today
programme.Humphrys
suggested that climate change may not be a
problem because the climate is always changing, that there was a
"great ice age in this country a few centuries ago", that climate
change may just be a local phenomenon, and put to Cicerone that you
"can't prove" that "carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is responsible
for global warming". Aggressive interviewing, perhaps, but hardly
conveying a due weight sense of where scientific opinion
lies.
Then in September, Newsnight kicked off a
debate about Arctic sea ice melt with a (well done) package
discussing the scientific views of sea ice specialist Peter
Wadhams. It rather undid the good work, however, with a debate
pitting two politicians - skeptic Tory MP Peter Lilley and Green
Party leader Natalie Bennett - against each other. Lilley and
Bennett had apparently been booked to discuss government policies
rather than climate science, but inevitably they ended up
discussing the science of climate change, with very
confusing results.
Work to do
These are just a few examples over a six month period and
should be taken in the context of the BBC's wider output. But they
do appear to demonstrate that the BBC has not rolled out Jones's
recommendations consistently when it comes to climate
science.
The basics of climate science are well-established, but
there are still plenty of active debates beyond those foundations
within the scientific community - and presumably there always will
be. It seems to us that scientists are increasingly willing and
eager to discuss how thinking on climate science is developing, the
well-understood conclusions of their work, and the uncertainties
that remain.
Continuing to get skeptic and green campaigners to debate
climate science is stifling the opportunity for the BBC to give the
public an understanding of where the real scientific debates lie.
What goes for primate research should go for climate science as
well.