BBC - Disinformation exposed

It’s taken a spot of so-called “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to show up the BBC.

How could presumably intelligent, if misguided, operatives at the BBC be so crass as to doctor Trump’s remarks? How could this happen in an organisation that a few years ago set up the ludicrously named “BBC Verify” to ensure that these things couldn’t happen?

I think there’s an answer, trying to read the minds of the BBC people, going something like this:

We all know that “Trump is a bad man”;

We are good people;

We are on the side of the Angels;

Anything we do to underline how bad the man is has to be fair game.

Disinformation

I’ve been conscious of bias at the BBC for quite a while. Does my answer apply to other pieces of disinformation perpetrated over recent years? Perhaps less obviously, but there’s still an element of the same thing in other areas.

The most persistent example is the climate. The BBC has certainly been relentless in its pursuit of climate doom. Paul Homewoood in the Daily Sceptic has been a most diligent recorder of what he refers to as “climate misinformation”, listing 50 instances in his articles of 5 and 6 November.

Mostly, they are the usual “Phew, what a scorcher” stories implying wrongly that they are unusual and caused by climate change. But the idea that extreme weather events, like hurricanes, are on the increase - which they are definitely not - is a constant theme. It is now deeeply embedded in people’s minds, largely I would guess because of the BBC.

How has the BBC got away with it? Because, I would say, the idea that we are doing all we can to “fight climate change” is a way of signalling that we are on the side of the Angels. Again, we are the good people. Those who dare to question how effective the net zero policies actually are can too easily be shouted down as “climate deniers” - bad people who don’t even care about the environment. It was apparently in 2018 that the BBC decided not to give airtime to these awful people.

Not many dead

There is of course another element to it. Journalists - even including BBC journalists - need to catch the attention of their readers, or indeed listeners. Stories saying that all is well; that there are now slightly fewer hurricanes (which is the fact); that polar bears are thriving and on the increase (as they certainly are); that the Great Barrier Reef is in good shape (also apparently true); don’t make the headlines.

The Oldie magazine still has a column headed “Not Many Dead” with examples of boring news items. It all goes back to a competition won many years ago by Claud Cockburn for the dullest headline anyone could find: he won with “Small Earthquake in Chile, Not Many Dead”.

We seem to need our disasters. Good news is boring.

Tony Herbert

20 November 2025