To Improve Accuracy, BBC Tells Its Reporters to Stop Giving Air Time to Climate Deniers

Reporters for BBC News are being directed to significantly curb the amount of air time they give to people with anti-science viewpoints — including people who deny climate change exists — in order to improve the accuracy and fairness of the network’s news coverage, according to a report released by the BBC’s governing body on Thursday.

The BBC Trust’s report was designed to assess the network’s impartiality in science coverage, in other words, whether it is staying neutral on critical issues.  In order to be neutral when covering science, however, the BBC noted it needs to avoid “false balance,” a fallacy that occurs when two sides of an argument are assumed to have equal value.

But despite the BBC’s pledge to have their reporters avoid false balance in climate change coverage, false balance is still a widespread phenomenon across prominent American news platforms.  According to a 2013 report from Media Matters on the issue, half of print outlets used false balance to debate the existence of global warming.  When covering the U.N.’s landmark climate change report that year, CBS News gave climate deniers more than six times their representation in the scientific community, and 69 percent of guests on Fox News cast doubt on the science.

The obvious effect of this is that viewers are being misled about the reality of climate change and the urgency that comes with it.  But the other effect is that some viewers wind up not caring about climate change altogether.

To Improve Accuracy, BBC Tells Its Reporters to Stop Giving Air Time to Climate Deniers