Source: BBC Radio 4: Feedback
URL: N/A
Date: 07/08/2015
Event: Roger Bolton discusses feedback to: "What's the Point of...? The Met Office"
Credit: BBC Radio 4
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Roger Bolton: But we begin with the Daily Mail columnist and controversialist Quentin Letts, described by one reviewer this week as having a "jauntily questing intelligence" - another said his latest programme was "abrasively adolescent". It was part of his Radio 4 series "What's the Point of...?", which, according to the BBC, is meant to "cast a critical but amicable eye across institutions at the heart of British life". In this programme, Mr. Letts wanted to know the point of the Met Office.
Quentin Letts: Can't trust weather forecasts?! Why not? Most forecasts come from the Met Office, a government body which receives hundreds of millions of pounds of public money.
Roger Bolton: Some critical listeners wanted to know what's the point of the BBC guidelines about balance. They feel the journalist was allowed to present a very one-sided view, in the parts of the programme which dealt with climate change.
Finlay Buchan: My name is Finlay Buchan from Kilmarnock in Scotland. There is a huge consensus amongst scientists, and yet the programme managed to pick three different people who are all what I would call climate change deniers, although one person did call himself a "warmist". I think that sort of strange.
Piers Corbyn: ...you read it in their blurb on the TV - it's to promote and defend and propagate the man-made climate change theory, and suggest what horrors are going to come, allegedly, from more CO2, which is fiction.
Quentin Letts: A contentious point, and one we'll come back to.
Thomas Clarke: My name is Thomas Clarke and I'm from North London. What I found was that in fact it was not challenging the science with more science, just providing soundbites which were more like propaganda than anything else. I think the BBC perhaps has a duty to separate criticism of institutions, which is fine and can be done in that way, from criticising science, where much more care is needed.
James Pickett: My name is James Pickett from the Isle of Wight. No doubt you will have had lots of grumpy emails about Quentin Letts' programme this morning. It was the best programme I have heard discussing global warming on the BBC. It also represents a rare departure from the party line on the subject, introducing a bit of balance for the first time I can remember.
Roger Bolton: Feedback listeners' concerns were shared more widely. In the Guardian, former BBC Science and Environment correspondent Richard Black - now director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit - said that the programme didn't so much ignore the editorial guidelines as "burn them to cinders". This is what the Corporation told us.
Female voice: The light-hearted tone of this series allows him to question and critique even the most sacrosanct of organisations. But we accept that in this episode, about the Met Office, the comments made about science and climate change would have benefitted from broader representation from the mainstream scientific community, although we did hear from a range of contributors, as well as from the Met Office. The range of views expressed was sufficient to meet the requirements of our guidelines for this type of programme.