Afternoon Open Thread: No More Equal Air Time

[SeminalBlog]

Last week the British agency that regulates broadcasting content, the Office of Communications, ruled a documentary aimed at debunking climate change broke industry rules to "be impartial" and "reflect a range of views on controversial issues." From the BBC:

The Great Global Warming Swindle, a controversial Channel 4 film, broke Ofcom rules, the media regulator says…

The film's key contentions were that the increase in atmospheric temperatures observed since the 1970s was not primarily caused by emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, and that the modern focus on climate change is based in politics rather than science.

It is seen in some "climate skeptic" circles as a counter to Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, and credited with influencing public perception of climate science.

However "Ofcom" ultimately let the broadcaster off the hook by ruling the documentary did not cause serious "harm or offense," even though Channel 4 conceded it falsified graphs and data for the film. Curiously, Ofcom also ruled that the link between global warming and human activity had been settled before March 2007 (when the documentary aired) and therefore global warming was no longer "controversial" at the time of broadcast — basically saying Channel 4 gets away with airing the Great Global Warming Swindle because everybody would have known by that time it was crap!

(IPCC chair Sir John Houghton expressed outrage at this notion, saying he knew for a fact the film misled people who believed they could trust the information presented in the documentary.)

This ruling reminds me of Al Gore's comments to NBC last year, in which he compared global warming deniers to people who think the world is flat — implying global warming is no longer a "debate" and therefore deniers should not get "equal time."

Apparently, Ofcom agrees with Al Gore….. though more importantly, can you imagine a US agency ruling against an American broadcaster for violating impartiality obligations? (Can you imagine American broadcasters even having impartiality obligations?)

Seminal readers, what are you hearing today?




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