Wednesday, July 27, 2011
So Since the BBC Say they only Report "Scientific Consensii" Why do the Anti-Nuclearists Appear Daily?
Dear BBC,
Last night on the "Hardtalk" programme on the BBC News Channel the BBC conducted what was described as a "debate" on nuclear power. In fact, of course, it was no such thing since the BBC simply refuse to do real debates and what you call "debate" was simply a Beeboid asking largely unfriendly and unanswerable questions of a representative of the nuclear industry representative and simple and largely friendly ones of a German "Green" politician.
May I remind you that only a few days ago the BBC issued a document saying that the BBC will allow even less than the less than 1 minute to sceptics for every 10,000 given to promoting the catastrophic global warming scare. The justfication for this behaviour is that there is alleged to be a "scentific consensus" on catastrophic warming despite the BBC's repeated failure to be able to name one single indepedent scientist who is part of the alleged consensus. The BBC document, which you have not only accepted but wallowed in specifically described such action as bogus impartiality
bogus impartiality (mathematician discovers that 2 + 2 = 4; spokesperson for Duodecimal Liberation Front insists that 2 + 2 = 5, presenter sums up that “2 + 2 = something like 4.5 but the debate goes on”) can, perversely, lead to bias in its own right, for it gives disproportionate weight to minority 58 views – and some of the minorities involved are expert in taking advantage of the platform offered. (p 58)
This point about false balance has often been made before, from the 2000 House of Lords Select Committee Report4, which criticised the tendency to pay undue attention to contrarian views “simply because confrontation makes good copy” to the 2010 Science and the Media paper2 that claimed that “applying the adversarial model to science stories has led to seriously misleading reporting”.
and
The presentational style of some coverage since that Impartiality Report has continued to suggest that a real scientific disagreement was present long after a consensus had been reached (p71)
I trust that you either do not dispute that there is a consensus among nuclear engineers that nuclear power is, by the standards of any other system, safe, or are able to produce evidence that there isn't. Since the definition of proof of consensus the BBC has adopted is that those in charge have said "
the technical argument was over" (p 61), that an international organisation (in that case the IPCC but in this instance the IAEA) had given their opinion and that "two hundred and fifty members of the US National Academy of Sciences" (p 71) had written a letter even though 31,000 scientists have signed a petition saying that alleged warming is not a threat.
I suggest to you that the consensus among experts is far stronher that nuclear power is safe. That far more than 250 nuclear engineers say that it is. That many international scientific organisations have said the same and that it wopuld be impossible for the BBC to name 31,000 scintists, or even 3,100 & probably not 310, acttual scintists willing to say that the safesty record of nuclear power is not far better, per kwh than other power sources, including windmills.
Of course if you feel that is not an accurate and impartial assessment of the genuine scientific consesnsu you will be able to point to the 3,100 or even 310. If not then that is acknowledgement of this consensus.
I still call for the BBC to provide that one hour of sceptical programming, which would certainly be within the balance even your own report requires. Please advise when the BBC will provide its first hour of allowing those whom are sceptical that we are enduring catastrophic warming will be nroadcast. Or, if balancing the 10s of thousnads of hours of alarmist propaganda with 1 hour of scepticism is too close to balance, when the BBC will be broadcasting an hour of genuine formal debate with both sides?
In any case, assuming you do not produce the 3,100 scintists, or even 310, it cannot be denied that there is a genuine scientific consensus about nuclear power.
The BBC haviing declared the standards you allege you stand by and the scientific consensus being at least as great as that alleged for catastrophic warming (in the event of you not being able to produce the 310, more than 100 times greater. The BBC is committed, if it is in any way honest, to putting out between 10,000 and 1 million more such programmes reporting that nuclear power is safe, inexpensive, renilable, non-polluting and renewable for billions of years.
Assuming you seek to achieve this balance within the year that will be between 30 and 3,000 programmes per day. This would be the minimum you wish to do if the BBC is to claim not to be a wholly corrupt fascist organisation or something ot would be possible for a decent human being to be associated with.
I await your prompt response.
Neil Craig
PS If producing 30 to 3,000 programmes a night was to stretch the deaprtment's capacity a little i would, at normal commercial rates, be willing to produce 50 or so such programmes. Anything to help.
Labels: BBC, British politics, Media
Comments:
<< Home
It shouldn't have to be because it can correctly only be used once per subject and even then should not be common.
That various sorts of propagandists are using it regularly & usually to mean a pretence that over 50% in a carefully selected group may agree, is yet another instance of misuse of language for political purposes. I was taking the piss in inventing the word.
Post a Comment
That various sorts of propagandists are using it regularly & usually to mean a pretence that over 50% in a carefully selected group may agree, is yet another instance of misuse of language for political purposes. I was taking the piss in inventing the word.
<< Home
