Wayback Machine Trumps FOI Tribunal

New submitter calder123 writes "Last week, the BBC won an FOIA tribunal ruling that they didn't have to reveal the names of attendees at a seminar in 2006, designed to shape the BBC's coverage of climate change issues. The document, uncovered by Maurizio Morabito, puts comments by the BBC that the meeting was held under Chatham House rules, and that the seminar drew on top scientific advice in an interesting light. In a bizarre coincidence, four of the BBC's attendees at the seminar have resigned in the last few days."

Comments

Must be nice

[crazyjj]

So the BBC is happy to take public money, but doesn't think there should be ANY strings or responsibilities attached? Must be nice. I wonder if they would accept other public agencies refusing THEIR Freedom of Information requests. I suspect not. And yet that is the precedent they could set.

Personally, I think it's a bad precedent to be set by a institution that has a journalistic wing itself. But, then again, I'm a little creeped out by the whole idea of a state-run media in the first place, even one that stringently attempts to remain objective. It's bound to produce conflicts of interest, no matter how much you try to avoid them.

And, even putting the precedent aside, it just looks bad. If you're going to ask others to be open, it's really embarrassing when it looks like you're trying to hide something yourself, especially when openness is one of your stated goals, oft-repeated.

Re:Must be nice

[Spad]

The BBC is not state-run, it is a publicly (not government) funded independent body.

Re:Must be nice

[clark0r]

If I had mod points I would mod you up. Most articles on the BBC are followed by comments by people who do not understand the fundamental workings of the organisation. The BBC is an independent news organisation. It does not have to bend to the will of governments or advertisers. That is it's huge advantage over commercial news and TV broadcasts. You only need to watch some US news shows to understand why this is preferable to commercial TV news.

Re:Must be nice

[jabuzz]

No because the government has virtually no power whatsoever over what the content provided by the BBC; excepting that the Foreign Office pays (or at least did in the past) some money to the BBC to run the World Service and sets the amount of the license fee.

Re:Must be nice

[telchine]

Isn't that kind of semantic? They have the power to tax.

The BBC is funded by a licence. It is not funded by tax.

I can choose not to pay for a licence. I can not choose not to pay tax.

Re:Must be nice

[Simon Brooke]

Isn't that kind of semantic? They have the power to tax. They "own" all of the airwaves. It may not be government by some technicality in law, but to a citizen the effect is the same.

No, speaking as a citizen, the effect is more or less the opposite. The BBC is (or should be, when it's brave enough) a bulwark against the government. For example the judiciary, in the US system, is also paid for out of taxes, but is independent and acts to limit the power of the executive. The BBC is intended (in part) to act analogously, but with an investigatory role rather than a judicial one. Sometimes (for example over the non-existent 'Weapons of Mass Destruction') the BBC has fulfilled that role magnificently - although following their cave-in over the Kelly affair they've been disappointingly timid.

Re:Must be nice

[chowells]

As of 2006, the licence fee *is* considered a tax.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldbbc/128/128i.pdf

"Parliament and not Government should set the level of the licence fee. In January 2006, the Office of National Statistics classified the licence fee as a tax for the first
time. We are very concerned about the consequences that this decision will have for the BBC’s independence."

Re:Must be nice

[Sique]

No, it's not the government. It will not be the goverment and it was never the government. Your problem is the false dichotomy which doesn't recognize anything else than "private" and "government". The local sewage plant is legally owned by a governmental entity, so it's governmental. The BBC is not owned by any governmental entity. It just belongs to itself.

Re:Must be nice

[Xest]

It can be a fairly muddy term.

When people say government they're usually referring to the subset of members of parliament who are currently in power.

Technically though the civil service which are the permanent unelected staff who help run our society by advising the government in power what the protocol is when they want to arrange a meeting with a world leader and that sort of thing are also government, but if I was to refer to them I'd just call them what they are The Civil Service.

I wouldn't call the police government, I wouldn't call the NHS government, I wouldn't call the army government, I wouldn't call the judiciary government. Whilst the likes of the judiciary makes decisions with no government influence and has the power to even hold government to account I would however say that the government determines from a high level how they are run.

This is where the BBC is still different from these other organisations though, the government has absolutely no power to determine how the BBC is run. It can do nothing more than set the cost of the license fee by limiting any increases which can put the squeeze on it somewhat but that's about it.

Technically the BBC only answers to the Queen as it exists by Royal Charter, so if for some reason, say the BBC unveiled itself as a bunch of lizardmen intent on taking over the world giving the government a real actual reason to take control of it or destroy it then the most government could do is push a motion in parliament to disband it, then present that to the Queen who along with her advisors would decide what to do - i.e. whether to withdraw the charter. Even this would require a lot of legal wrangling on behalf of the Queen though and her advisors - i.e. whether there was legitimate cause to do so under law and so forth. They found it hard enough to even revoke a knighthood given to someone a couple of years back who turned out to be not quite so deserving of it after all so revoking the BBC's charter would likely be very difficult indeed.

So I suppose in theory the government could go about attempting to influence or disband the BBC via the Queen, but there are two reasons that wont happen:

1) Any government doing this would probably find it more fatal to them than the BBC such that they'd probably see so many rebellions and be kicked out of power so quickly that they wouldn't have chance to take it anywhere. Just to reiterate the point, this would be about as politically untenable as the president deciding to rip up the US constitution in the US whilst nuking a few US states for fun.

2) Whilst the BBC remains a quality organisation, the Queen would probably quite literally tell the government to go fuck itself. One of the few actual executive things she'd rightfully have the power to do in this day and age where she's really nothing more than an ornament that brings in the tourists with her estates and history.

Re:Uhh, sounds like a tax to me...

[floofyscorp]

"live broadcast television transmissions" You can own a TV and not pay the license fee, so long as you're not watching live TV on it or any other device in your home.

I see what you did there...

[rickb928]

And it's interesting. Apparently, the Beeb decided that the overwheling evidence of climate change and global warming rendered dissenting views not only null, but dangerous, in that these dissents would only impede what is necessary action, and are either specious, disingenuous, false, or all of the preceding. So the BBC essentially wanted to suspend even the pretense of impartial reporting and just go all in for acknowledging man-caused climate change as fact.

Now, it may well be, but this decision had the effect of marginalizing opposing points of vew, on the BBC, to the point that there would be NO dissent.

I wonder if there are any other issues that the Beeb (affectionately referred to as 'Auntie' in the Register article referenced, and also by some of those Brits old enough to suspect the Beeb is less than honorable in some areas) would similarly suspend impartiaility (sometimes considered a foundation of journalism, so therefore suspending the practice of 'journalism' in reference to these issues) and thereby become essentially the mouthpiece of one side or the other in a dispute? Other than the Israel/Palestine conflict, Islamic terrorism, and perhaps global crony capitalism, I can't thing of a thing.

Ssadly, the BBC is become just another media outlet, adding to the spew of whatever meme is advantageous to the powers that be. Those powers, for those of you at home scoring in pen, do not include us.

And of course, the BBC would prefer to not even be asked these questions, much less have to answer them honestly or at least be compelled to admit they even discuss such things. Here in the U.S. we don't have such a problem. Our media outlets are essentially divided into three camps; Leftist, Rightist, and irrelevant. And these outlets are hardly called to account for anything, except by an opposing camp, though the Irrelevants tend to question everything, even themselves, perpetuating their irrelevancy. You know which outlets belong to which camps, right? Ok, score this one in pencil until you get time to review the action and come to a better decision...

Re:Not according to my British friends.

[xaxa]

... but there's some hoops to jump through to get them to stop bugging you about it.

Not according to my British friends, there's not. They just keep bugging you. One of my friends (generally known in the Crome OS and Raspberry Pi communities as "Hexxeh") finally just gave in and paid the fee, even though he only ever uses the thing as a monitor. I told him he was nuts, but the lack of a BBC weenie calling him on his cell phone weekly apparently causes the license to pay for itself in reduced cell minutes.

I suspect if the UK ever got a working "do not call list", then the BBC would do the same thing the US companies and "free cruise!" scammers in the US have done, and just offshore the robo-calls.

Lots of things wrong with that.

1) The TV licensing people don't pester you if you tell them (possibly in writing?) that you don't use the TV to receive broadcasts. I have a TV, and haven't been asked to buy a license for over three years now. I was originally asked once, when I moved into this house and the previous resident's license (the license is for the property) expired.

2) They don't call, they send letters and -- very occasionally -- visit in person.

3) It's free to receive phone calls here.

4) A company you don't have dealings with is breaking the law to telephone you, as they don't have your permission.

Re:Yep, "AGW" *must* be true

[Shrike82]

Point by point analysis:

This is incredible. In Jan 2006 the BBC held a meeting of “the best scientific experts” to decide BBC policy on climate change reporting

Is incredulity the appropriate response here? Is the fact that they held the meeting incredible, or are the quotation marks supposed to help me figure it out?

The BBC has been in court blocking FOI attempts to get the list of the 28 attendees, but it’s just been discovered on the wayback machine

Great. How about actually quoting the BBC on their reasons for attempting to block the FOIA request instead of speculating that it must be a conspiracy?

It turns out that only 3 were current scientists (all alarmists). The rest were activists or journalists

Woah, woah, woah. Look at the list everyone. I can spot a hell of a lot more than three names and affiliations on there that I'd call scientists. Which three are we referring to? What discounts all the others from being scientists? A baffling and quite badly founded argument really...

The BBC sent four low level representatives: Peter Rippon, Steve Mitchell, Helen Boaden, George Enwistle. All have since risen to power.

"Low level" eh? The Duty Editor for World at One/PM/The World this Weekend, the Head Of Radio News, the Director of News and the Head of TV Current Affairs. Not to mention the 28 other BBC staff attending. Why the focus on just these four in particular and the dismissal of their roles at that time? Again baffling...

Amazingly, those are also the exact four who have thus far resigned this week over the false paedophilia accusations against Lord McAlpine.

Ah less baffling now. They've been involved in a scandal this week so their involvement brings into question the entire proceedings of a seminar nearly seven years ago, apparently. That's some astounding journalism. *golf clap* Kudos to "Bruce Hoult in a Bishop Hill comment" (from TFA) for selective blindness and blatant agenda pushing in an article attempting to criticise the BBC for the very same things. Truly inspiring.

Re:Disruption

[Black Parrot]

It isn't a religious faith. Its science. Its writing on the wall, and serious people are finally starting to read it. The people polluting the Earth are already having an impact on our weather patterns - one that has claimed lives.

WRONG

It's NOT science.

Science WELCOMES attempts at falsification. It does NOT label doubters "denialists" or "heretics".

So, what do you call people who reject the heliocentric solar system?

Re:Disruption

[dkleinsc]

In about 30 seconds with Google, I found:
- an entire book on the subject
- Greenpeace, for whatever their word is worth, claiming that the Koch brothers have donated over $61 million to the cause of denying global warming.
- a 2007 article from Newsweek about it.

I could keep going, but the point is that this is a demonstrably incorrect counterargument (or the pro-global warming folks have some sort of massive conspiracy that they've been able to keep going for a couple of decades).