First they take your money to force their opinions over you.
Then they take your money to hide what they were doing, because they knew what they were doing was wrong.
It was a turning point in BBC coverage. The 2006 seminar with “climate experts” turned out to be mostly a workshop with Greenpeace, industry activists and lobbyists. It was the point the BBC dropped even the pretense of impartial news reporting on the climate. After this “high-level” seminar the Beeb announced it didn’t need balance in the climate debate. Then having made out they were so scientific and honorable, they spent the next six years burning more money to hide the names of the experts from the public that paid for them.
Is there any better argument to explain why state funded media is not just a waste of money, but irresponsible, immoral and unethical political advertising?
There is no saving the BBC. Over the last decade climate change was supposedly the “biggest scientific” challenge for the world, and a massive cost to the citizens who were falsely told they needed to change the weather. More than ever, public funds should have been used to analyze both sides of the science and the politics. Instead what we got were the personal views of a select few, pushing their own political activism, while poor people were slugged for the cost of the news, the legal folly, and worse of all, for the pointless expensive electricity.
The BBC has spent tens of thousands of pounds over six years trying to keep secret an extraordinary ‘eco’ conference which has shaped its coverage of global warming, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The controversial seminar was run by a body set up by the BBC’s own environment analyst Roger Harrabin and funded via a £67,000 grant from the then Labour government, which hoped to see its ‘line’ on climate change and other Third World issues promoted in BBC reporting.Tony Newbery, 69, from North Wales, asked for further disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. The BBC’s resistance to revealing anything about its funding and the names of those present led to a protracted struggle in the Information Tribunal. The BBC has admitted it has spent more than £20,000 on barristers’ fees. However, the full cost of their legal battle is understood to be much higher.In a written statement opposing disclosure in 2012, former BBC news chief and current director of BBC radio Helen Boaden, who attended the event, admitted: ‘In my view, the seminar had an impact on a broad range of BBC output.’Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
The incentives in state media are all wrong
Journalists working for state funded media are by definition, personal beneficiaries of big-government, yet they are also supposed to be independent commentators of big-government. It might work for a while, but it was never going to last.
BBC workers don’t work under the discipline of the market, they get paid what big-government is willing to give them and the bigger the government the better. Ultimately, the BBC may take the money from the public, but where is the accountability?
This has taken years to unfold, and months to be exposed in the media (credit is due to David Rose for covering so well, what so few will even touch.) Read it all here David Rose, Mail on Sunday.