The BBC is falling short on its climate protest coverage

According to a YouGov poll this week 64 per cent have an unfavourable view of Just Stop Oil (only 17 per cent have a positive view and the rest aren’t sure). Unfortunately, however, none of these people appear to feature in the contacts books of BBC producers.

The Today programme this morning attempted to have a discussion on the tactics of Just Stop Oil on disrupting sports events such as Wimbledon and Ashes test matches. The whole exercise was somewhat hampered by the fact that the two guests which the BBC saw fit to invite, Chris Packham and Lord Deben, could hardly bring themselves to say a negative word about the pressure group. Rather they both wanted to say that if we didn’t want to see such protests it was down to the government to do more to cease oil production.

That anyone might disagree with the immediate cessation of exploration for new oil supplies in the North Sea, for example, didn’t seem to enter into Today’s concept of the spectrum of public opinion. Such a view is treated as if it is beyond the pale, like kicking away the crutches of old ladies. 

Nor does the Today programme seem at all keen to represent the view – somewhat common among the general population – that Just Stop Oil are a bunch of privileged, middle class people who feel a sense of entitlement to have their views adopted by society at large, and who will resort to unscientific hysteria about an ‘unliveable Earth’ in order to advance their demands.

Lord Deben was allowed to repeat, entirely unchallenged, the spurious claim made by his Climate Change Committee that achieving Net Zero will cost a mere 1 per cent of gross national product. The Treasury, by contrast, refuses to come up with an estimate, saying that it is impossible to do so, given that many of the technologies required to achieve it have yet to be invented or commercialised.

The BBC is making a habit of soft treatment of Just Stop Oil and other climate groups. In April I wrote here of how an episode of Newsnight had employed a similar lopsided sense of balance, holding a discussion on Just Stop Oil’s tactics between an activist from Just Stop Oil and, er, an activist from Extinction Rebellion. Our national broadcaster simply isn’t serving the public with balanced coverage of climate change, rather it is campaigning on the issue.

That wouldn’t bother me were the BBC an independent organisation funded by people who watch and listen to it. Yet it is a public service broadcaster funded by a hypothecated tax on TV sets. It could soon be even worse.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, former chairman Richard Sharp says he would favour a levy that was levied on all households, regardless of whether they own a TV, or perhaps on broadband connections. And he is supposed to be a Conservative. Keir Starmer may well be taking note. 

If we are going to have a public service broadcaster then it is absolutely imperative that it demonstrates balanced coverage. On climate change at least the BBC is falling a long, long way short.