What’s better than Pravda? When Pravda is controlled by big government but masquerades as “commercial” and, even better, when it competes with and sucks money from independent competitors–making it harder for journalists who do ask the government hard questions to be heard at all.
Who needs the ABC? The BBC has arrived to provide the propaganda for free and wants to compete with commercial news outlets. They’ve appointed the most gullible journalists they could find (who’ll believe any official edict). Their new Australian Editor, Wendy Frew, accidentally revealed that while she’s good at rearranging a press release and calling it news, she is not too good with numbers.
In a BBC article yesterday by Wendy Frew titled “Australia has hottest spring on record as temperatures soar” comes the extraordinary news that Australia has warmed by 90C since 1910.
“Australia has been warming up by about 0.9C [a year] since 1910,” Dr Braganza told the BBC.
The online article was fixed this morning (with no mention of the mistake), though copies of the error appear elsewhere. It says something that Frew went out of her way to add “[a year]” into Braganza’s quote without doing the numbers and realizing what that meant. Despite her history of reporting climate news, evidently she did not know that all the climate fuss was about a total warming in Australia of only a tiny 0.9C in 100 years. (And that’s all the BOM can find even after sweeping adjustments that throw out the hottest original records, ignore the hot decades of the late 1800s, and artificially cool old temperatures down and make trends warmer by as much as 2C.) Was she surprised? We’ll never know.
BBC Global want Australian audiences and Australian advertising dollars too
The BBC announced on October 2, 2014 that they want Australian marketshare online — ratings matter, and so does the money:
BBC Global News Ltd, the world’s most trusted international news brand, is extending their local coverage in Australia by launching a dedicated Australian news service on BBC.com from October 21 and producing a series of programs called Australia Direct to air on BBC World News throughout the period of the G20 Summit.
BBC wants to beat commercial rivals:
“…director of advertising sales Alistair McEwan said. “We’ve got to increase our positioning up that ranking. We wouldn’t want to put a number on what rank we’re looking to achieve.
“We have growth international growth objectives for audience, traffic and revenue.
“We’ll aim to commercialise that growth across desktop and mobiles.”
“We’re the most globally tweeted news source in the world,” Davies said. “What we are seeing globally is that people will go to a trusted news source.”
Naturally, the BBC is filling all the holes left by the private media:
In addition to news, untold Australian stories on a range of topics will be commissioned for the BBC.com verticals: Future, Culture, Autos, Capital and Travel, as well as the newly launched BBC Earth.
Evidently there are not enough stories on cars and holidays.
Wendy Frew’s role is to “drive the news agenda” in a “priority market”:
BBC News has appointed Wendy Frew as Australia Editor, Online. Wendy is a former SMH journalist and Chief of Staff and her remit will be to drive the news agenda of the day and work with our global correspondents and growing team of freelancers on news features and analysis. She will be joined by another journalist who together will work with the BBC’s Sydney correspondent Jon Donnison, and regular contributors Phil Mercer and Katie Beck.
Chris Davies, Director of Sales and Marketing, BBC Global News Limited said: ‘Australia is a priority market for us and with this local market investment together with our large network of international journalists, we are uniquely placed to offer readers stories they don’t normally hear from local media, giving them the full picture on news that affects them.’
When the government runs a commercial media outlet
Is the British taxpayer funding it? Hard to say, but it’s wholly owned by the BBC, and its aim is “commercial returns”. What’s better than Pravda? When Pravda is controlled by big government but masquerades as “commercial” and, even better, when it competes with and sucks money from independent competitors–making it harder for journalists who do ask the government hard questions to be heard at all. The Green Blob expands.
In Australia we think of the ABC as being a media octopus:
It is now easily the biggest media outlet in the country, with five radio stations, four TV stations, an online newspaper, a huge social media presence, a publishing house and a string of bookshops promoting ABC-approved writers and journalists. — Andrew Bolt
But the BBC is really the giant deep sea squid. Look at the reach:
BBC World News and BBC.com, the BBC’s commercially funded international 24-hour English news platforms, are owned and operated by BBC Global News Ltd. BBC World News television is available in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide, and over 380 million households and 1.8 million hotel rooms. The channel’s content is also available on 178 cruise ships, 53 airlines and 23 mobile phone networks. BBC.com offers up-to-the minute international news and in-depth analysis for PCs, tablets and mobile devices to more than 76 million unique browsers each month.
“BBC Worldwide is the main commercial arm and a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Its vision is to build the BBC’s brands, audiences, commercial returns “
Wendy Frew has been producing climate “news” for years (without realizing all the fuss was about 0.9C of warming). Check out this article from 2007 in the SMH (an excellent training ground for unskeptical reporters).
Senator Nick Minchin had merely pointed out that there were eminent scientists in the skeptical camp, and asked why they were called “loonies”. The headline “Minchin denies climate change man-made” misrepresented the content, and Frew repeated baseless ad homs against the then-Professor Bob Carter. This failure of logic, reasoning and rhetorical skill evidently makes her prime material for a BBC Editor.
The best comment I’ve seen on the old 2007 comes from 
JamesG at Bishop Hill
From the Minchin article we got this gem of idiocy:-
“A former CSIRO climate scientist, and now head of a new sustainability institute at Monash University, Graeme Pearman, said Professor Carter was not a credible source on climate change. “If he has any evidence that [global warming over the past 100 years] is a natural variability he should publish through the peer review process,” Dr Pearman said. “That is what the rest of us have to do.” He said he was letting the fossil fuel industry off the hook.”
Ignoring the ‘one true Scotsman’ fallacy…
a) You’d think if your current jobs entirely depend on the green scare you’d be aware of your own multiple conflicts of interest before discussing those of anyone else.
b) Since when in Science did the null hypothesis have to be proven? Just how do you become a climate scientist anyway – just by spelling your name right?
c) The fossil fuel industry supplies us all exactly what we demand of it. Anyone who pretends it is somehow the fault of the fossil fuel or energy industries is a sanctimonious hypocrite.
d) Meanwhile what has the Monash Sustainability institute ever done to reduce poverty, keep us warm or supply power by comparison? These people natural assume just they a superior moralistic air that they don’t deserve. Some of us think the cure is worse than the disease and we have been 100% right on almost everything so far. – Dec 1, 2014 at 12:48 PM |
>Followed by Howard Prior: Frew’s grotesque bias and lunatic embrace of the most crazed AGW ideas finally drove me to cancel my SMH subscription.
If only British citizens and Australian taxpayers could cancel their subscriptions to the BBC and ABC.
Why should Australian taxpayers pay for a public media service? We need that billion dollars back to pay off the obscene debts that the ABC helped them to accrue.
h/t to Colin, Robbo, James G and Phil Bratby (in comments at Bishop Hill)