Some time ago, before I left the BBC, I took part in a meeting about blogging with Mark Byford, the BBC’s Deputy Director General and the executive with primary responsibility for news and editorial standards. During the meeting he raised the familiar question about whether you could trust bloggers. In response I said that trusting individual bloggers on the first reading would be foolish but that over time one built up patterns, connections and associations that I did believe meant that you could trust bloggers – certainly when seen as a network. I also said that I increasingly didn’t “trust” BBC news in the sense that I found their coverage to be sensationalistic and focussed on the negatives in the world and that I and others were increasingly choosing not to “consume” it.

Any time I have been involved in, or close to, anything that became a news story I have been struck by how far from the truth most of the coverage has been. Extrapolate this to all the other stories covered in your average news day and you start to get worried.

Since leaving the BBC I have been asked to appear on a few news programmes on both radio and TV to comment on some story about the web. Each time I have been mildly disconcerted at the apparent lack of concern about my credibility as an expert. A couple of times the people involved already knew me, but the others have mostly got my name from a list and, apart from a phone call to check I am able to speak on the topic without being a complete arse, they seemed casual about putting me on air.

It would appear that this same casualness has been behind Alessio Rastani’s recent appearance on BBC News …

Thanks to the web I was able to do something about my instinct that this story wasn’t what it appeared to be and track the various attempts to dig into it. If I was just sitting passively consuming the news and trusting broadcasters to get it right, I would be none the wiser.

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Yesterday evening in the company of a few people (who hold opinions I respect greatly), I asked a truly ho-hum topical question, “So, does the COP15 lot have the climate science thing settled – are they in posession of the truth, are they working with the unreasonable openness and candour that is the hallmark of truth?”. I asked this knowing full well, I would probably recieve a lot of opinion (because the science bit seems to be worded in such obtuse terms that very few understand it – by ‘it’, I mean the scientific peer reviewed facts (i.e. the truth)’).   In a way that is uncustomary for me, I decided to shut up and listen. Here’s what was said . . . .

Everyone – bar none, seemed to conclude along the lines of the following statement, or words to the effect :- “one of the biggest frustrations we have is that there seems to be a distinct lack of emphasis and motivation toward telling the public (and business) the whole truth on climate change”,  followed by – “the biggest frustration we have today posing as truth and information is a constant stream of ‘balanced’ rhetoric. What the world needs today is truth around climate change, . . . .  truth not balance.”

Most people agreed that the distorted need to ‘balance’ the truth is by far the biggest hurdle in understanding the issues. Fox News owns the ‘fair and balanced’ term, even the BBC news site abounds with a nonsensical ‘balance’ where we are constantly expected to side with the skeptic or the counter – how is one ever to know what is the truth – see here  http://bit.ly/6cGtTL
Until we have the truth, the unplugged, unmitigated and wholly unreasonable truth I suppose we’ll never agree about what true trouble is and what to do about it.

I suppose that poses another query,  “Does balancing the truth lead to a pack of lies, and how can we tell?”

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Yesterday evening in the company of a few people (who hold opinions I respect greatly), I asked a truly ho-hum topical question, “So, does the COP15 lot have the climate science thing settled – are they in posession of the truth, are they working with the unreasonable openness and candour that is the hallmark of truth?”. I asked this knowing full well, I would probably recieve a lot of opinion (because the science bit seems to be worded in such obtuse terms that very few understand it – by ‘it’, I mean the scientific peer reviewed facts (i.e. the truth)’).   In a way that is uncustomary for me, I decided to shut up and listen. Here’s what was said . . . .

Everyone – bar none, seemed to conclude along the lines of the following statement, or words to the effect :- “one of the biggest frustrations we have is that there seems to be a distinct lack of emphasis and motivation toward telling the public (and business) the whole truth on climate change”,  followed by – “the biggest frustration we have today posing as truth and information is a constant stream of ‘balanced’ rhetoric. What the world needs today is truth around climate change, . . . .  truth not balance.”

Most people agreed that the distorted need to ‘balance’ the truth is by far the biggest hurdle in understanding the issues. Fox News owns the ‘fair and balanced’ term, even the BBC news site abounds with a nonsensical ‘balance’ where we are constantly expected to side with the skeptic or the counter – how is one ever to know what is the truth – see here  http://bit.ly/6cGtTL
Until we have the truth, the unplugged, unmitigated and wholly unreasonable truth I suppose we’ll never agree about what true trouble is and what to do about it.

I suppose that poses another query,  “Does balancing the truth lead to a pack of lies, and how can we tell?”

View Rainmakers Bio »
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