Green Party co-leader Jonathan Bartley has written to the BBC asking whether they will review their policy of giving airtime to those who deny the existence of human-made climate change.
Bartley’s letter comes after the BBC admitted fault for letting the views of prominent climate-change sceptic Lord Lawson go unchallenged on their flagship Today programme [1].
Bartley welcomed the BBC admission but challenged their underlying assumption that giving space for climate-change deniers on their programmes offers viewers and listeners “balance”.
In his letter to David Jordan, Director of Editorial Policy and Standards, Bartley said:
“I was pleased to see the BBC complaints team apologise for the Radio 4 Today programme interview with Lord Nigel Lawson on 10th August 2017. I am writing today to ask what the BBC now plans to do to make sure this does not happen again?
“The overwhelmingly scientific consensus is not only that climate change is happening but that human activity is causing it. 97% of peer-reviewed scientific papers say it it human-made. The 3% who question this link have been found to contain errors.
“Giving credibility to those on the fringes with no evidence to support their claims does not provide balance, it misleads.”
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