Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Monbiot Attacks Channel 4

George Monbiot lays in Channel 4 over their global warming 'documentary':

So here we go again. For the second time, Channel 4 has been fiercely criticised by the broadcasting regulator for a programme attacking environmental science. For the second time, the director was Martin Durkin.

Ten years ago, his series Against Nature was found to have misled his interviewees about "the content and purpose of the programmes" and distorted their views "through selective editing". Now Ofcom has ruled that the programme he made last year — The Great Global Warming Swindle — treated two scientists and an organisation (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) unfairly. For the second time, Channel 4 will have to make an embarrassing primetime statement.

But while the new ruling exposes some of the channel's practices, it also exposes the limitations of the regulator. The programme was peppered with distortions and misleading claims. But despite being presented with a vast dossier of evidence by climate scientists, Ofcom decided that it could not rule on the matter of accuracy. While news programmes are expected to be accurate, other factual programmes are not, and Ofcom "only regulates misleading material where that material is likely to cause harm or offence."


Read the full article here.

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