Investigation launched re BBC global warming bias and activities of its pension fund

• Striking parallels have been observed between BBC coverage of global warming and the activities of its pension fund.

"The corporation is under investigation after being inundated with complaints that its editorial coverage of climate change is biased in favour of those who say it is a man-made phenomenon.

• The £8billion pension fund is likely to come under close scrutiny over its commitment to promote a low-carbon economy while

• struggling to reverse an
• estimated £2billion deficit.

Concerns are growing that BBC journalists and their bosses regard disputed scientific theory that climate change is caused by mankind as “mainstream” while huge sums of

• employees’ money is invested in companies

• whose success depends on the theory being widely accepted. ...

The BBC is the only media organisation in Britain whose pension fund is a member of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which has more than 50 members across Europe.

• Its chairman is Peter Dunscombe, also the BBC’s Head of Pensions Investment.

Prominent among its recent campaigns was a call for a “strong and binding” global agreement on climate change – one that fell on deaf ears after the UN climate summit in Copenhagen failed to reach agreement on emissions targets and a cut in greenhouse gases.

• Veteran journalist and former BBC newsreader Peter Sissons is unhappy with the corporation’s coverage.

He said recently: “The corporation’s most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that ‘the science is settled’ when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn’t. It is, in effect,

• BBC policy, enthusiastically carried out by the BBC’s environment correspondents, that those views should not be heard.

“I was not proud to be working for an organisation with a corporate mind so closed on such an important issue.”

Official BBC editorial policy governing how its correspondents should cover global warming was revealed after a member of the public wrote in:

• “I have heard reports that the BBC has decided not to broadcast any news or reports which disprove, disagree, or cast doubt on global warming theory.
• Could you provide some form of justification for this?”

In a reply dated October 26 last year, Stephanie Harris, Head of Accountability at BBC News, said:

• “BBC News takes the view that our reporting needs to be calibrated

• to take into account the scientific consensus

• that global warming is man-made.”

She went on to quote from a BBC-commissioned report published in June 2007, which said: “There may be now a broad scientific consensus that climate change is definitely happening and that it is at least predominantly man-made. The weight of evidence

• no longer justifies equal space being given

• to opponents of the consensus.”

Last month the BBC Trust announced an investigation after a string of complaints

• that the corporation was promoting the theory that climate change was a man-made phenomenon."

"Eight Billion Pound BBC Eco-Bias," by Geraint Jones, Express.co.uk, 2/7/10, via Tom Nelson

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