'Great Global Warming Swindle' broke the rules
"The Great Global Warming Swindle, a controversial Channel 4 film, broke Ofcom rules, the (UK) media regulator says.
"In a long-awaited judgement, Ofcom says Channel 4 did not fulfil obligations to be impartial and to reflect a range of views on controversial issues."
BBC
Distortions, Falsehoods, Fabrications
Thanx Nora.
Categories: climate-change, global-warming
Pip Wilson posted item above at 8:10 PM | Permalink
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Steve McIntyre reviews at length the findings of Ofcom, Britain’s television regulator, which was asked by 39 global warming scientists and activists to punish The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary for mentioning there was another side to the scary story:
Among the complainants claiming misrepresentations were Bob Ward and the 37 professors (Myles Allen, Phil Jones et al) who alleged a wide variety of error here and David Rado of the 175-page complaint profiled by BBC here. Ofcom did not uphold any of the misrepresentation complaints against Swindle. Not one.
What’s more:
None of the complaints alleging lack of due impartiality in the science portion (sections 1-4) was upheld. Not one. The only bone thrown to the complainants was a finding that there had not been due impartiality in the portion talking about Africa - an issue that Bob Ward and the Myles Allen 37 didn’t even mention.
Yes, there was one error, fixed before the documentary showed in Australia:
And indeed, Swindle contained an error in the temperature graphic in the first program, which was said to have been inadvertently introduced in the production of the graphic. Unlike (say) Inconvenient Truth, where errors have remained uncorrected even when one of their Scientific Advisers supposedly brought the error to the attention of the Inconvenient Truth producers, in this case, the producers promptly replaced the graphic, with changes being made even before the second showing.
How bad was that error?
Ofcom noted the error but found that this error was “not of such significance as to have been materially misleading so as to cause harm and offence in breach of Rule 2.2″.
Concludes McIntyre:
In relation to the program complaint, it’s hard to imagine a more thorough stuffing of the complainants. They were lucky they didn’t have to pay costs.
But this still doesn’t go the fundamental sin in this complaint: why are global warming activists reacting to sceptics by trying to sick the authorities onto them, rather than simply answer back? And how shoddy is the case for global warming theory than 37 professors between them cannot convince Ofcom of a single uncorrected error in The Great Global Warming Swindle?
McIntyre has also posted on Ofcom’s ruling on the complaint by Sir David King that he’d been misquoted (only partially, in fact, with dumb views ascribed to him by one interviewee that were actually held by James Lovelock), and on its ruling on the complaint by Carl Wunsch, who was horrified that he appeared in a program otherwise filled with sceptics, thus making him apparently look bad by association.
In all, this witchhunt against The Great Global Warming Swindle has failed utterly to discredit it, discrediting instead the accusers.
A footnote: Tony Jones, a climate change extremist, has tried hard to discredit the documentary, and on ABC Lateline this week summed up the Ofcom decision like this:
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Britain’s broadcasting watchdog has criticised a contentious documentary on climate change.
The Great Global Warming Swindle, which was screened on the ABC, challenges the theory of human-triggered climate change. The British regulator Ofcom found the program was unfair to some scientists, contained factual errors, and didn’t include a range of views.
The ABC followed its broadcast of the program with a panel discussion which included climate scientists and sceptics.
That’s Jones’ comments in full. I leave it to you to decide if they fairly sum up the almost total collapse of the complaints against the documentary, or whether this is another insight into Jones’ refusal to give a fair hearing to those who present data to contradict his preferred theory of a man-made apocalypse.
(Thanks to readers Ray, Mark and many others.)
from http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/great_global_warming_swindle_cleared
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