The BBC has been accused of institutional alarmism in a new report published by Net Zero Watch. It reveals the BBC’s persistent exaggeration and false information when it comes to climate and weather-related news.
The study, written by me, reveals that the BBC has been forced to correct a dozen items of false claims and fake news in climate-related coverage after receiving public complaints in recent years. [bold, links added]
The paper shows that it has become common practice for BBC reporters to publicize exaggerated and often misleading weather- and climate-related stories in order to hype up the potential risks from global warming.
Persistent misrepresentation by BBC journalists in climate news coverage is fueling the corporation’s institutional alarmism.
Institutional alarmism is a form of hyped and exaggerated news reporting that is deeply embedded in the BBC.
It manifests itself as unbalanced, one-sided coverage of climate risks that are habitually exaggerated and that go uncorrected by the BBC’s in-house fact-checkers.
In 2020, the BBC’s director-general warned that the problem posed by disinformation online was increasingly serious and that the BBC would need to work harder than ever to expose fake news and separate fact from fiction.
Since then the corporation set up a team of fact-checkers, a BBC-wide Anti-Disinformation Unit, and a Climate Misinformation team.
Yet none of these teams of fact-checkers noticed or addressed the long list of false news stories that were only corrected by the BBC after lengthy and protracted complaint procedures.
The dossier includes the following examples of fake news:
- The three complaints upheld against the BBC’s Climate Editor, Justin Rowlatt, last year, two of which concerned a Panorama episode devoted to global warming.
- Claims that the number of floods around the world has increased 15-fold since 2005.
- A BBC News report that the population of African penguins was declining rapidly because of climate change.
- Repeated claims that onshore wind was “banned” in the UK
- False statements about “record temperatures”
- A BBC Two broadcast wrongly alleged that the reindeer population in Russia was declining because of climate change
- Repeated claims that hurricanes were becoming more frequent and powerful
- A World at One broadcast asserted that sea levels in Miami were rising at ten times the global rate
Most of the claims were so obviously and ridiculously false that it is hard to see how they made it through the BBC’s editorial process. This of course raises further questions.
Is the BBC so entrenched in its own version of climate change that it believes its own propaganda, just as the Soviets did? Or do the editors and various layers of management simply not care whatever lies are published?
The above list is merely the tip of the iceberg. Many other falsehoods occur without being challenged, or where complaints are simply ignored.
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The report, “INSTITUTIONAL ALARMISM – THE BBC’S DISASTROUS CLIMATE COMPLAINTS” is available here.
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The BBC just like our own leftists Propaganda from CNN Fake News Disinformation and Lies
Th BBC’s propaganda is even being incorporated into storylines for regular programmes like Casualty, where climate alarmists are seems as heroes and the victims of the “undeducated brutal masses” … there is no end to it and the sooner Boris does away with the licence fee, the better.