Futures Forum: Climate change @ the BBC
Here's this morning's review of Attenborough's documentary from the Telegraph:
Climate Change: the Facts review: David Attenborough's superb documentary offers hope for climate crisis
Gerard O'Donovan
18 APRIL 2019 • 10:00PM
There was something appealingly robust about the title Climate Change: the Facts (BBC One), especially for a film presented by David Attenborough. At a time when public debate seems to be getting ever more hysterical, it’s good to be presented with something you can trust. And we all trust Attenborough.
His effect on us is extraordinary. We were warned for years about the danger plastic posed to our oceans. But it wasn’t until last year, when Attenborough offered some shocking evidence of marine life being devastated by plastic in Blue Planet II, that many individuals felt the need to do anything about it. A report out this week cited the programme as a major contributing factor to a significant drop in disposable plastic usage in Britain in the past 12 months.
There was something appealingly robust about the title Climate Change: the Facts (BBC One), especially for a film presented by David Attenborough. At a time when public debate seems to be getting ever more hysterical, it’s good to be presented with something you can trust. And we all trust Attenborough.
His effect on us is extraordinary. We were warned for years about the danger plastic posed to our oceans. But it wasn’t until last year, when Attenborough offered some shocking evidence of marine life being devastated by plastic in Blue Planet II, that many individuals felt the need to do anything about it. A report out this week cited the programme as a major contributing factor to a significant drop in disposable plastic usage in Britain in the past 12 months.
...
It was all very stark – but not entirely. Part of Attenborough’s assurance is that he is never without hope. The message underlined in the film’s final 20 minutes was that it is not too late. “There is still time if we act now with determination and urgency,” said Sir David, giving examples of progress already made. He closed by emphasising the role young people can play in pushing climate change to the top of the agenda, highlighting Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish girl who initiated a global wave of “school climate strikes” recently. It was an inspired note on which to end a superb film, guaranteed to make more of us look responsibly to the future.
Climate Change: the Facts review: David Attenborough's superb documentary offers hope for climate crisis
And as the Guardian notes, it's largely because of the BBC's coverage, that the debate around climate change is finally going mainstream:
Extinction Rebellion and Attenborough put climate in spotlight
New bulletins are leading on global warming and the BBC is shedding some of its ‘balance’
Caroline Davies
Fri 19 Apr 2019 06.00 BST
It was all very stark – but not entirely. Part of Attenborough’s assurance is that he is never without hope. The message underlined in the film’s final 20 minutes was that it is not too late. “There is still time if we act now with determination and urgency,” said Sir David, giving examples of progress already made. He closed by emphasising the role young people can play in pushing climate change to the top of the agenda, highlighting Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish girl who initiated a global wave of “school climate strikes” recently. It was an inspired note on which to end a superb film, guaranteed to make more of us look responsibly to the future.
Climate Change: the Facts review: David Attenborough's superb documentary offers hope for climate crisis
And as the Guardian notes, it's largely because of the BBC's coverage, that the debate around climate change is finally going mainstream:
Extinction Rebellion and Attenborough put climate in spotlight
New bulletins are leading on global warming and the BBC is shedding some of its ‘balance’
Caroline Davies
Fri 19 Apr 2019 06.00 BST
Last modified on Fri 19 Apr 2019 08.40 BST
With Extinction Rebellion making headlines and Sir David Attenborough broadcasting The Facts on BBC One, climate change has gone mainstream this Easter. A nation has been watching protesters glue themselves to trains, turn London’s roads into gardens and actively invite arrest in their hundreds.
As a media strategy it is working. How did glueing yourself to a train highlight climate change, Radio 4’s Today presenter Nick Robinson asked Dr Gail Bradbrook, an Extinction Rebellion co-founder. “It gets you on the Today programme,” she replied.
For Chris Packham, an environmental campaigner and BBC presenter, this is welcome progress, marking a long-awaited moment when news bulletins lead daily on global warming.
He, like others, has detected a recent change in the BBC’s coverage. Attenborough’s much heralded programme, broadcast on Thursday, was part of a series of hard-hitting documentaries by the corporation, along with a forthcoming programme on human population growth presented by Packham. “They [the BBC] are certainly making sure they are moving away from criticism levelled at them in the last few years of only showing a rose-tinted view of the natural world,” Packham said.
Demonstrators dancing down Oxford Street or planting shrubbery on Waterloo Bridge attract headlines, which in turn influence programme-makers, he believes. “So I think there is a change, yes. The BBC has got its fingers on the pulse.”
From the start Extinction Rebellion has made it easy for the media. Through its “Declaration of Rebellion” on Halloween, its “Blood of our Children” stunt in Downing Street and strip protest in the Houses of Parliament, it has made and nurtured key contacts at media organisations in the buildup to this week’s direct action.
Another co-founder, Roger Hallam, has been clear that the strategy of public disruption is heavily influenced by Saul Alinsky, the US community organiser who wrote Rules for Radicals, and Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement. “The essential element here is disruption. Without disruption, no one is going to give you their eyeballs,” he has said.
That means accepting negative coverage in some parts of the media, such as hostile front-page stories in the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail on Thursday. “Obviously when you shut down central London for several days, you are going to attract attention,” said Howard Rees, one of Extinction Rebellion’s media organisers. “Getting media attention is very important.”
Rees said media reaction had been “mixed but fairly positive”. There had been some negative commentary, such as describing protesters as “sanctimonious eco-zealots” and “prancing hippies” whose direct action was merely a “tawdry New Age circus”. “It gives everyone a really good laugh because it is so totally inaccurate,” Rees said.
The protesters were pleased with the mainstream broadcast coverage, he said. “The BBC often does its best to try and ignore the issue and us, so we are pleased to see we have managed to have a bit of a breakthrough there.”
Twice in three years complaints have been upheld over Today programme interviews with the climate change sceptic Nigel Lawson for failing to challenge his views more robustly. In September last year the BBC’s director of news and current affairs, Fran Unsworth, accepted the corporation had got its coverage of climate change “wrong too often” and told staff: “You do not need a ‘denier” to balance the debate.”
In October Radio 4’s The World Tonight and BBC World Service’s Newshour announced they would be covering climate change at least once a week, every week.
Rosie Rogers, a senior climate campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said: “The BBC’s slightly odd decision to maintain an even balance between climate science and conspiracy theory seems to have finally been overturned, and that’s extremely welcome. We do understand the pressure they have been under from the denial lobby, but science is not a political ideology and should not be treated as one.”
Richard Black, a former BBC environment correspondent and the author of Denied: the Rise and Fall of Climate Contrarianism, said the pressure exerted on the broadcaster by contrarians had been “quite extreme at times” in the past. Much of the mainstream media was now having to take the issue seriously, he said, “because the facts have changed. And in the end, if you want to be credible you have to go with the facts.”
Negative commentary about Extinction Rebellion would not affect morale, said Black, the director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank. “They have got one central aim, which it to get people talking about climate change. And on the basis of what we have seen, they have been successful in that. Everyone in the media is talking about them. Politicians are talking about them.”
He added: “I think, though, what is probably more profound for the future is not Extinction Rebellion but the schoolchildren’s strike, which is a very organic movement, utterly driven by kids for kids.”
Extinction Rebellion and Attenborough put climate in spotlight | Environment | The Guardian
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With Extinction Rebellion making headlines and Sir David Attenborough broadcasting The Facts on BBC One, climate change has gone mainstream this Easter. A nation has been watching protesters glue themselves to trains, turn London’s roads into gardens and actively invite arrest in their hundreds.
As a media strategy it is working. How did glueing yourself to a train highlight climate change, Radio 4’s Today presenter Nick Robinson asked Dr Gail Bradbrook, an Extinction Rebellion co-founder. “It gets you on the Today programme,” she replied.
For Chris Packham, an environmental campaigner and BBC presenter, this is welcome progress, marking a long-awaited moment when news bulletins lead daily on global warming.
He, like others, has detected a recent change in the BBC’s coverage. Attenborough’s much heralded programme, broadcast on Thursday, was part of a series of hard-hitting documentaries by the corporation, along with a forthcoming programme on human population growth presented by Packham. “They [the BBC] are certainly making sure they are moving away from criticism levelled at them in the last few years of only showing a rose-tinted view of the natural world,” Packham said.
Demonstrators dancing down Oxford Street or planting shrubbery on Waterloo Bridge attract headlines, which in turn influence programme-makers, he believes. “So I think there is a change, yes. The BBC has got its fingers on the pulse.”
From the start Extinction Rebellion has made it easy for the media. Through its “Declaration of Rebellion” on Halloween, its “Blood of our Children” stunt in Downing Street and strip protest in the Houses of Parliament, it has made and nurtured key contacts at media organisations in the buildup to this week’s direct action.
Another co-founder, Roger Hallam, has been clear that the strategy of public disruption is heavily influenced by Saul Alinsky, the US community organiser who wrote Rules for Radicals, and Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement. “The essential element here is disruption. Without disruption, no one is going to give you their eyeballs,” he has said.
That means accepting negative coverage in some parts of the media, such as hostile front-page stories in the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail on Thursday. “Obviously when you shut down central London for several days, you are going to attract attention,” said Howard Rees, one of Extinction Rebellion’s media organisers. “Getting media attention is very important.”
Rees said media reaction had been “mixed but fairly positive”. There had been some negative commentary, such as describing protesters as “sanctimonious eco-zealots” and “prancing hippies” whose direct action was merely a “tawdry New Age circus”. “It gives everyone a really good laugh because it is so totally inaccurate,” Rees said.
The protesters were pleased with the mainstream broadcast coverage, he said. “The BBC often does its best to try and ignore the issue and us, so we are pleased to see we have managed to have a bit of a breakthrough there.”
Twice in three years complaints have been upheld over Today programme interviews with the climate change sceptic Nigel Lawson for failing to challenge his views more robustly. In September last year the BBC’s director of news and current affairs, Fran Unsworth, accepted the corporation had got its coverage of climate change “wrong too often” and told staff: “You do not need a ‘denier” to balance the debate.”
In October Radio 4’s The World Tonight and BBC World Service’s Newshour announced they would be covering climate change at least once a week, every week.
Rosie Rogers, a senior climate campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said: “The BBC’s slightly odd decision to maintain an even balance between climate science and conspiracy theory seems to have finally been overturned, and that’s extremely welcome. We do understand the pressure they have been under from the denial lobby, but science is not a political ideology and should not be treated as one.”
Richard Black, a former BBC environment correspondent and the author of Denied: the Rise and Fall of Climate Contrarianism, said the pressure exerted on the broadcaster by contrarians had been “quite extreme at times” in the past. Much of the mainstream media was now having to take the issue seriously, he said, “because the facts have changed. And in the end, if you want to be credible you have to go with the facts.”
Negative commentary about Extinction Rebellion would not affect morale, said Black, the director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank. “They have got one central aim, which it to get people talking about climate change. And on the basis of what we have seen, they have been successful in that. Everyone in the media is talking about them. Politicians are talking about them.”
He added: “I think, though, what is probably more profound for the future is not Extinction Rebellion but the schoolchildren’s strike, which is a very organic movement, utterly driven by kids for kids.”
Extinction Rebellion and Attenborough put climate in spotlight | Environment | The Guardian
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