Green Conflict of Interest scams at the BBC

[marchesarosa]

The BBC has been caught taking illicit sponsorship for current affairs programmes from, among others, green campaigning groups

BBC tightens rules on sponsorship after 15 breaches

Investigations into Malaysia's palm oil industry were found to be in breach of guidelines


The BBC is to impose tougher rules on sponsored programmes broadcast by its commercial channels, after 15 shows were found to have breached guidelines.

The programmes were all shown on BBC World News available outside the UK.

Among those found in breach were shows about Malaysia, produced by FBC, a UK firm that had an "apparent financial relationship" with the government.

However, the BBC Editorial Standards Committee said none of the programmes breached guidelines on impartiality.

Nonetheless, the committee regarded the policy breaches as "serious editorial failings" and said they "risked undermining the editorial integrity of [the BBC's] output".

Broadcasting watchdog Ofcom has confirmed it is launching its own investigation into the programmes.....

more

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15739468
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14556988
www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/appeals/esc_bulletins/2011/world_news.pdf

[marchesarosa]

Conflict of interest

The alarm was initially raised by a freelance journalist last year, who had concerns about a programme called Taking the Credit, broadcast on 23 October 2009.

It was an investigation into carbon trading, which had been made by an independent production company, Rockhopper TV, and acquired by BBC World News.

"The BBC should be transparent when accepting financial assistance with programming and should not transmit programmes where there is any suggestion that a conflict of interest might arise”

The journalist alleged that the programme's funder, the Africa Carbon Livelihood Trust, had a Managing Director who was also the chief executive officer of Envirotrade, a company featured in the programme.

In May, the Editorial Standards Committee found the programme to be in breach of BBC guidelines.

It said an "inextricable link between the funder organisation and a project featured in the programme" led to a conflict of interest.

Furthermore, "the programme portrayed the work of Envirotrade in a positive way" breaching a requirement that sponsor's activities should not be promoted in BBC shows.

Rockhopper TV, which was not involved in any of the other incidents, has previously apologised for the error and continues to make programmes for the BBC. You betcha!

The above is from Richard Black's report except the last exclamation.


Rockhopper productions is run by Richard Wilson, former BBC ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT. On its payroll is Andrew Veitch, former CHANNEL 4 NEWS ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT. It is also run by Anya Sitaram, former ITN ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT.

Thanks to BDK on Bishop Hill for this nugget
bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/11/15/surprise-surprise.html#comments

[marchesarosa]

This is just the latest in a series of exposés showing, for example, the role of NGOs input into supposedly objective reporting of climate issues. The IPCC itself is infested with WWF
supporters.

WWF-Affiliated Personnel in IPCC Assessment Report 4, Working Group 1
nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/11/02/wwf-affiliated-personnel-in-working-group-1/

There's a lot of it going on, you know!

[marchesarosa]

Firm in BBC news-fixing row targeted poverty guru
Earth Institute director denies he occupied an 'ambassador' role with palm oil producer

from The Independent www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/firm-in-bbc-newsfixing-row-targeted-poverty-guru-6263374.html

The London-based television company being investigated by Ofcom over a global news fixing row tried to “cultivate” a world-famous environmental economist and other leading opinion formers in the green movement for the documentaries it made for the BBC and other news broadcasters.

FBC Media claims in its promotional literature that it targeted Professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York, to be an “ambassador” for its corporate client on programmes it made about the controversial palm oil industry in Malaysia.

Mr Sachs, a special adviser to United Nations secretary general Ban-Ki Moon, was a prominent interviewee on a BBC World “Third Eye” documentary about Malaysia which was produced by FBC. The Independent has established that FBC was paid £17m by the Malaysian government to work on a “global strategic communications campaign”. The documentary was one of eight FBC programmes made for the BBC found to have been in “serious” breach of corporation editorial guidelines in a report issued yesterday by the BBC Trust.

FBC also worked for Sime Darby, the world’s biggest palm oil producer, and in a report for the Malaysian company gives a series of “campaign highlights”, among which is the “cultivation of influential ‘ambassadors’ such as the Earth Institute’s Jeffrey Sachs”. It refers to Sime Darby “champions”, among whom Mr Sachs is listed.

In a statement, the Earth Institute said Professor Sachs was “surprised and dismayed to see this completely inaccurate and utterly absurd portrayal of him”. It said: “He is not an ambassador or anything else for this company (Sime Darby). He has absolutely no personal relationship with the company and has never, indeed would never, serve as an ‘ambassador’ or ‘champion’ to any corporation.”

The Institute said Sachs had been “mischaracterized” in a way that was “quite troubling”.

A spokesman for Professor Sachs said that he had visited Sime Darby’s plantations but only for the purposes of research for the University of Malaya and that he had raised concerns about the deforestation that he saw. He also held meetings with Malaysian government and Sime Darby officials at which those officials expressed determination to pursue sustainable development approaches to palm oil production.

When Mr Sachs featured in the BBC’s “Third Eye”, he said: “The way that Malaysia, for example, developed palm oil with smallholders who were working in larger areas and often with government leadership…has been exemplary.” The author of New York Times best-sellers The End of Poverty and Common Wealth , he also contributed an authored piece to an advertising supplement in the International Herald Tribune which FBC featured under the heading “sophisticated corporate messaging within an editorial framework” in a slide show of FBC corporate case studies for 2007-2008.

“Some promising steps have been taken by Malaysia in recent years, which may set a powerful example for the rest of Asia,” Sachs wrote. “The government is working closely with leading companies, such as the palm oil giant Sime Darby, which have recognised that long-term environmental sustainability is vital to the business interests of serious, law-abiding companies with long-time horizons.” Sime Darby is a major donor of the Earth Institute. In a 2010 report, the Institute says: “Sime Darby, a multinational corporation based in Malaysia, bolstered our Tropical Agriculture and China 2049 programs with a $500,000 gift. The company created an international advisory panel to enhance its sustainability initiatives across its core business operations worldwide, and it became a member of the Earth Institute’s Corporate Circle.”

The Earth Institute said $250,000 had been spent on research on sustainable development in China and on a digital soil mapping initiative led by the Institute.

Mr Sachs was also featured as an expert on “World Business”, a programme that FBC made each week for the global business channel CNBC, which has been suspended the programme indefinitely following The Independent ’s revelations.

FBC set out its television production methods in a documentary proposal made to the Malaysian Palm Oil Council as recently as April. The London company said it would include in the proposed documentary interviews with leading figures from the Malaysian palm oil industry, “complemented by supporting interviews with Malaysian government officials, industry leaders and Western third party champions”. The proposed documentary would “put a particular focus on small farm holders” in order to minimize the idea that the industry was dominated by “large corporate interests”. FBC has recently gone into administration.

[marchesarosa]

For what its worth I think anyone interested in pursuing sleaze and profiteering from the green agenda will find plenty of it attaching to warmists. It is, after all, just about the only "growth industry" in the world at the moment. In this case it is "Big (Palm) Oil" doing the funding rather than the other kind!

According to Bishop Hill bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/11/17/a-mouthpiece.html#comments

... the Earth Institute gets lots of money from said palm oil company and Jeffrey Sachs turns up as a talking head on TV shows saying how great their environmental stewardship is. The TV shows appear to have been made by the same company that were funding the BBC's green output.

[marchesarosa]

The Leopard in the Basement comments at Bishop Hill

"This story makes a pretty damning prima faci case that Sachs has been acting like a promoter for Malaysian Palm Oil. I notice Sachs denies he is an "Ambassador" for Sime Darby, I suppose this must be correct because he dosn't have a contract with that title written on it


Let's see

Sachs is a director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York
Sime Darby is a major donor of the Earth Institute.
FBC also worked for Sime Darby, the world’s biggest palm oil producer, and in a report for the Malaysian company gives a series of “campaign highlights”, among which is the “cultivation of influential ‘ambassadors’ such as the Earth Institute’s Jeffrey Sachs”.
Mr Sachs was also featured as an expert on “World Business”, a programme that FBC made each week for the global business channel CNBC,
Sachs denies he is an "Ambassador", but everything he has done seems very nicely placed to benefit Sime Darby."

[marchesarosa]

Shub says

Palm oil is one of the major contributors to deforestation. Part of the whole ruckus with Indonesia and REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) is that Indonesia wants palm plantations qualified for REDD ( as an afforestation effort). So, the owner would cut down standing forest and make money off it, sell the land and make money off it, the next guy would grow palm and make money off the plant products, and REDD carbon credits.

It is a surprise Jeffrey Sachs hasn't become an IPCC author yet.

[marchesarosa]

Are we uncovering here the tip of the iceberg of the major corruption by elites promoting AGW that some of us have long suspected?

Athelstan on Bishop Hill informs us

Cutting down primary forest, burning it and then allowing Palm Oil plantations to buy up the land is another great scam, the environmentalists if they were true to their moniker should be kicking up such a stink about this wilful destruction of the Indonesian rain forest but do not - flora and fauna deliberately destroyed.

Such a waste and a confusion of goals and policy which have made a bad situation worse, for forest and peat land bogs.............not a big fan but Fred Pearce has some of it correct:
www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/3317396/Bog-barons-Indonesias-carbon-catastrophe.html

Indonesia, which was losing an estimated 1.9 million hectares of forest each year, had emerged as one of the world's leading sources of carbon emissions in part due to a global spike in prices for palm oil and a surge in China's demand for wood pulp.
Together, these forces had pushed deforestation into carbon-rich peatlands that were being cleared and drained to make way for oil palm and pulpwood plantations. Limiting deforestation in Indonesia's peatlands needed to be a high priority because the carbon losses per hectare were substantial.

[marchesarosa]

It's not as if bio-fuels actually SAVED any CO2 emissions compared to fossil fuels. They produce just as much CO2 one way and another.

On the other hand they do make a lorra, lorra money for the hypocrites/profiteers who will follow anywhere the greens lead delving into the tax payers' pockets. (See also "green crony capitalism").

[marchesarosa]

From Robin Horbury at Biased BBC
biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2011/11/lamb-to-slaughter.html#comments





This man, Robert Lamb, appears to be at the heart of the BBC's environmental programmes scandal. www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/november/world_news.shtml Surprise, surprise, he was trained as a BBC producer in the 1980s and has since become a one man blizzard of greenie programming. Two of the companies he has has set up and run have been named by the BBC trustees as "causing concern" because they accepted funding from external sources in alleged breach of current affairs programme guidelines and were made in such a way that there could have been conflicts of interest. In other words, the production standards and financing stank to high heaven.

So who is Robert Lamb? A partial profile is here. www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Robert_Lamb As you see, he ticks almost every greenie activist box - the BBC, the UN, and various right-on pressure groups. His own, self-righteous assessment of his eco-fascist agenda is here. www.ourplanet.com/imgversn/102/lamb.html Basically, he set up the Television Trust for the Environment in the 1980s and ran it until around 2005. Over the past few years, he formed and now runs his own outfit called One Planet Pictures. He also helped establish, and is now an executive producer of, Dev TV.

TVE, as I reported yesterday, biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2011/11/curiouser-and-curiouser.html has mysteriously vanished from the web (on October 24, a B-BBC reader found) and I don't think that's a coincidence. Under the template created by Mr Lamb, it currently (according to its latest charity commission return - h/t Tony Newbery, Harmless Sky) generates more than £1.4m a year of support from sources that include various greenie tranzis and government departments that have an EU-driven climate change agenda. From the beginning, again under Mr Lamb's nakedly aggressive political agenda and template, its goal was to disseminate unbridled greenie alarmist propaganda www.tvebiomovies.org/ in accordance with the UN agenda. The only surprise really is that it has taken this long for this to be seen as a conflict of interest.

Dev TV and One Planet Pictures - set up, I surmise, on the basis of my own inside information, after Mr Lamb fell out with the TVE trustees - appear to be run on exactly the same lines. I urge you to have a quick look at what they say and how they are structured. Their output is hardcore, unqualified propaganda. And Dev TV's co-production guidelines here www.dev.tv/index.php/common/page/co_producing/ appear to be a recipe for exactly the conflict of interest and undue outside interest that the BBC trustees have now - so belatedly - fingered.

I do hope this signals the end of Mr Lamb's eco-fascist career. But the BBC both spawned him and has kept him in business for almost 30 years - I suspect that like the hydra, he will keep on going.

[marchesarosa]

Bishop Hill has several threads devoted to these matters here

Attenborough on Earth Report
bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/11/19/attenborough-on-earth-report.html

TVE
bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/11/19/tve.html

Small World Response
bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/11/18/small-world-response.html

[marchesarosa]

Having read the posts upthread you may take this idealistic article by Saint David written in 1996 with a tiny pinch of salt.

David Attenborough writes about TV environmentalism
www.ourplanet.com/imgversn/82/atten.html


I am constantly amazed, in my business of turning up in different places in order to film some obscure bird or other, to meet people all over the world who have seen some of my programmes and who vividly remember, and talk about, the animals they saw. Rather, I am both amazed, and not amazed. For there is no mystery in the almost universal interest in television films about natural history and the environment.

Unlike so much of what is on television, such films are about reality. They are not about commercial people trying to promote a product, or political people trying to persuade you that they are right, or about silly glamorous people. They are about real people tackling real life.

We are often not aware of the reality of what goes on elsewhere, and so tend to adopt glib answers to problems of which we have little personal comprehension. Television can be a great connector, bringing a broader and deeper sympathy than was there before. It is seen by the most educated and the least educated, by people who speak all languages, everywhere in the world.

BBC World television is now broadcasting a weekly environment and development series - called Earth Report - to try to increase this understanding of the real world. Produced, on a strictly editorially independent basis, by the Television Trust for the Environment (TVE) and the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF International), the series aims to be a viewer's report card on how well the world is doing to meet the targets set by the Earth Summit in Rio four years ago. I am delighted to introduce each programme.

The five-minute stories range from a promising new method of farming to save mountain gorillas like those I visited in Life on Earth, to the ecological catastrophe enveloping the Black Sea, from a crisis in coral reefs in the Caribbean to community action to combat pollution in Peru and the Ukraine. Other programmes will consider how 'green' will be the Olympic Games in Sydney in the year 2000, describe citizens' initiatives to make life better for the poor in Calcutta, look at increasing pressures on the Mediterranean, and show how threatened species are making comebacks in Saudi Arabia and Patagonia.

It began with start-up funding from UNEP and UNICEF, which made possible 12 pilot programmes. These were well received, not least by the BBC which had found a strong demand in Asia, the Middle East and Africa for more coverage of wildlife and environmental issues. The BBC says it had no hesitation in turning to TVE to meet that demand: since it was set up by UNEP and Central Television 12 years ago, it has established a worldwide reputation for its independent, high-quality programmes.

The series has been made possible by the generosity of WWF and the MacArthur Foundation, which have provided more than half the $900,000 it is costing to provide a regular service. Other finance has come from such sources as the Global Environment Facility, the World Health Organization, UNEP, and the Secretariat of the Ramsar Convention.

The series is produced by a Colombian, Marc de Beaufort, and local film crews have almost always been used in the 30 developing nations and former Eastern Bloc countries so far visited. A team of women film-makers is producing programmes on issues considered at the United Nations Conference on Population and Development in Cairo two years ago.

I am particularly pleased that the programmes will also be seen by many more people even than those English-speakers who tune into BBC World: in fact, the vast majority of viewers will get them in their own languages on their terrestrial television channels. The BBC will make Arabic and Japanese versions. AETI, operating from Madrid, will beam the reports in Spanish and Portuguese to public service broadcasters in Latin America. WWF and TVE will be distributing them in local languages through their own networks.

I hope that people will feel that these programmes give them an insight into the most important problems that face them in the real world. We cannot, after all, migrate to another planet. We all have a part to play in preserving the one we have got.

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Sir David Attenborough - whose Life on Earth, Trials of Life and Secret Life of Plants are among the most popular programmes ever broadcast - is on the board of TVE and is a former Controller of BBC 2. He has given his services free to Earth Report.

[marchesarosa]

The BBC's hidden 'warmist' agenda is rapidly unravelling
www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8901365/The-BBCs-hidden-warmist-agenda-is-rapidly-unravelling.html
Since 2006, the BBC has relentlessly promoted the global warming orthodoxy as a pressure group in its own right.

Puffed by the BBC: a wind farm near nears completion in Scotland Photo: GETTY


By Christopher Booker 19 Nov 2011 The Telegraph

The story of the BBC’s bias on global warming gets ever murkier.

Last week there was quite a stir over a new report for the BBC Trust which criticised several programmes for having been improperly funded or sponsored by outside bodies. One, for instance, lauded the work of Envirotrade, a Mauritius-based firm cashing in on the global warming scare by selling “carbon offsets”, which it turned out had given the BBC money to make the programme.

Just as this scandal broke, I was also completing a report, to be published next month by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, on the BBC’s coverage of climate change. It ranges from the puffing of scare stories dreamed up by “climate activists”, to BBC reporting on wind farms, often no more than shameless propaganda for the wind industry. Part of the story told in my report is the unhealthily close relationship that developed between the BBC and organisations professionally involved in the “warmist” cause.

Some years back, the BBC adopted a new editorial policy –that the scientific and political “consensus” on climate change was now so overwhelming that it should be actively promoted, while climate sceptics, or “deniers” as the BBC calls them, should be kept off the airwaves.

A key moment in developing the new party line was a “high-level seminar” in 2006, attended by a bevy of top BBC executives. It was organised by Roger Harrabin, one of its senior environmental correspondents, and Dr Joe Smith, a geographer and climate activist from the Open University.

They had set up the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme to promote the consensus line on global warming, funded by, among others, the Department for the Environment (then in charge of government policy on climate change) and WWF, one of the leading warmist pressure groups.

For a long time the BBC was remarkably coy about what had transpired at this gathering, but gradually – aided by the Freedom of Information Act –the details were dug out by two diligent bloggers, Tony Newbery of Harmless Sky and Andrew Montford of Bishop Hill. Their submission on it was, however, brushed aside in that dotty BBC Trust report last summer, where Prof Steve Jones recommended that the BBC’s coverage of climate issues should show not less bias but more!

Since 2006, the BBC has relentlessly promoted the global warming orthodoxy as a pressure group in its own right. In covering the latest twists of this story on his blog, Montford cites another odd BBC programme, Earth Reporters: Sea Change, funded by Unesco, which was like an adulatory commercial for the scientists who push alarm about the impact of global warming on the oceans, via the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The scientific adviser for the programme was the same Dr Smith who organised that 2006 seminar, and whose website lists a string of other BBC programmes he has worked on.

The irony is, however, that just as the BBC adopted its new hard line on climate change, in the real world the story was beginning to shift. Ever more searching questions have come to be asked about the supposed “consensus” on man-made warming, and the BBC’s coverage has come to look ever more one-sidedly absurd.

Last week, even Richard Black, another BBC proselytiser for man-made warming, was gloomily having to reveal the conclusion of a new IPCC report: that, over the next few decades, “climate change signals are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variabilty”. In plain English, that means the great scare story is over. What a shame. But at what a price.

[marchesarosa]

BBC's Mr Climate Change (Roger Harrabin) accepted £15,000 in grants from university rocked by global warning scandal

By DAVID ROSE
Mail Online 20th November 2011


A senior BBC journalist accepted £15,000 in grants from the university at the heart of the ‘Climategate’ scandal – and later went on to cover the story without declaring an interest to viewers.
Roger Harrabin, the BBC’s ‘environment analyst’, used the money from the University of East Anglia’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research to fund an ‘ad hoc’ partnership he ran with a friend....

In none of Mr Harrabin’s reports on the subject were the grants that he and his friend Dr Joe Smith had received from UEA ever mentioned. However, BBC insiders claim that the use to which the money was put – annual Real World seminars for top BBC executives on issues including climate change – had a significant impact on the Corporation’s output.

‘The seminars organised by Roger and his friend were part of a process which has effectively stifled all debate within the BBC about man-made global warming,’ said one senior journalist. ‘As far as the high-ups are concerned, the science is settled.’....


Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2063737/BBCs-Mr-Climate-Change-accepted-15-000-grants-university-rocked-global-warning-scandal.html#ixzz1eGZp1zOJ


Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2063737/BBCs-Mr-Climate-Change-accepted-15-000-grants-university-rocked-global-warning-scandal.html#ixzz1eGZCNBg8

[marchesarosa]

See this profile of Joe Smith, who set up the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme with pal Rog from the beeb. The plonker has actually made an "academic" career of his "Environmental activism"! www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/staff/people-profile.php?name=Joe_Smith

Staff Profile

Dr Joe Smith

[e-mail]
Faculty of Social Sciences
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
United Kingdom
MK7 6AA

Senior Lecturer in Environment

Geography

Profile

All of my work seeks to promote better understanding of - and action on - global environmental change issues. This breaks down into three areas of research and commentary: the history of environmental politics; public engagement and the media, and the politics of consumption. These three areas are not separate – each informs the others. My research practice across these areas has a strongly collaborative and interdisciplinary quality and an experimental edge.

In much of my work I have combined thinking and writing about these issues with direct engagement. Hence I draw on the term 'action research' to describe projects that generate research but are simultaneously designed to make a difference to the way the world is. These include a long running strand of work on media decision-making and environment (1996-), the experimental public engagement and research project Interdependence Day (2006-) and the communications, participation and research project Creative Climate (2009-) (a 'Mass Observation' of climate change over ten years, 2010-2020). All of these seek, in different but related ways, to advance public understanding and debate about environmental change, and to place them within the context of wider political, social and cultural change.

Together these strands of research contribute to an understanding of the dynamic relations between media, publics, democratic institutions and environmental change.

I teach environmental politics at both undergraduate and Masters level, and have four current or recent PhD students in the areas of environmental politics, and cultural work on climate change. In addition to my academic research I write popular materials on environmental issues and have consulted on numerous broadcast projects on BBC1, BBC2, BBC4 and Radio 4 over the last ten years.

Qualifications
BA in Social And Political Sciences (Cambridge)
PhD in Geography (Cambridge)

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What Joe calls "Action Research" other call propaganda. See where his root are - in political science not in REAL science. He's just a jumped up political cadre who aspires to change the world via TV instead of via revolution.