12 October 2007

 The BBC is making a real hash of the Al Gore story. Today on Radio Four’s flagship lunch-time news programme, it invited Martin Livermore from the Scientific Alliance, to give an interview on Gore winning the Nobel Prize.

As we have blogged on the site, the Scientific Alliance was set up by Scottish quarryman Robert Durward in 2001 to fight environmental regulations and take the sceptical line on climate change.

It was one of the first “corporate front groups” to be set up in the UK. It has consistently tried to undermine climate science and networked with Exxon-funded groups in the US and UK.

However rather than saying the Alliance undermines the debate on climate science, the BBC’s presenter Shaun Ley described the Alliance as “campaigning to improve the quality of debate about science”.

 11 October 2007

It’s the story many hacks and sceptics have been waiting for: To shoot down Al Gore’s Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth. Last night, the BBC’s flagship news programme, the Ten O’Clock news, led with the story that a British High Court Judge had ruled that Gore’s film had made “alarmist” and “exaggerated” claims.

As the trailers finished the BBC’s Anchorman Huw Edwards said: “A controversial film on climate change being shown in British schools is heavily criticized by a high court judge for making alarmist and exaggerated claims”.

The overriding theme of the piece, by the BBC’s environmental analyst Roger Harrabin, was that Gore’s film was flawed with nine significant errors. The judge had pointed out it was “a political film.”

However what the BBC spectacularly failed to do in its programme last night was give any background to the “political” nature of the attack against the film. The BBC reported that the fact the High Court case against the film was brought by Stewart Dimmock, a “school governor in Kent” who called the film a “political shockumentary”.

Andy Rowell, 11 October 2007 

As the brutal military oppression of pro-democracy demonstrators and Monks continues behind the scenes in Burma, calls for international investors to pull out of the country have been ignored. In fact the opposite is true, especially for the oil and gas industry. For them it is business as usual.

The oil industry sees pro-democracy demonstrations as an annoyance standing in the way of the prize of lucrative oil and gas deals.

The ugly truth is that it covets the security and stability that despotic regimes often provide. Years ago I remember one oil executive from British-based Premier Oil, who was under fire at the time for investing in Burma, saying that despotic regimes were better for investing in than democracies because they offered “stability”.

The IRD in Northern Ireland

By Tom Griffin 9 October 2007

In his June 2006 obituary for Fr Dennis Faul, Dean Godson suggested that the life of the Irish human rights campaigner ‘offers profound lessons for democracies on how to fight, and not to fight, terrorism.’

Godson may well be right, but for reasons other than those he intended.  As he acknowledges, Faul was labelled a ‘Provo priest’ by his critics. The irony is that this smear originated in precisely the kind of ‘political warfare’ that Godson advocates.

Andy Rowell, 5 October 2007 

In our global media age, the role of the news media is coming under ever greater scrutiny. As more news channels and newspapers offer 24 hour news on air, in print and on the internet, there is increasing ability for the media to not only report the news but also influence public opinion.

But just as the reach and importance of the media is growing, there is evidence that it is downplaying the most important political issues of our time in preference for softer “human interest” stories.

This very topic was one of the issues being debated at a conference in September at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow called “Communication and Conflict: Propaganda, Spin and Lobbying in the media age.” Over three days of debate, issues such as war propaganda, war reporting, government spin, and media and the Middle East were hotly discussed.

In a session on “Spin and investigative reporting” an award-winning journalist from the BBC, who had spent months working undercover to expose racism in the British police, described what he thought was the most important “story of the decade”. 

Was it the war in Iraq, and the bloody carnage that has seen over one million people die? No. Was it the huge issue of climate change, and the increasing occurrence of floods and drought? No. Was it the huge debate about whether Iran should be allowed nuclear weapons or not? No.

By Nicholas Jones 27 September 2007

Blair: Remember him?

After all the pre-publication hype that Alastair Campbell’s diaries would provide "a fuller and more complete truth" about political life in Britain, the upshot three months later seems to be the reverse: his book’s superficiality has been equalled only by its apparent irrelevance.

Campbell was likewise wide of the mark in his over-blown claim that The Blair Years would become "part of the historical record of a fascinating period in British and international politics" and his belief that "millions of words will be published and broadcast…about TB, his leadership and his legacy"

Again the opposite seems to be the case. Apart from the ongoing nightmare over what to do about the tragic trauma of the Iraq war, the relevance of the Blair decade appears to be disappearing over the political horizon at a rate of knots. When contrasted with the repercussions of the far-reaching changes of the Thatcher decade -- whether their impact was ultimately thought to have been for good or for ill -- the checklist of achievements for Tony Blair during the ten years he was in office bears no comparison.

By Alison Benjamin

Guardian Unlimited, September 26, 2007

An environmental group today took aim at ExxonMobil with the launch of an online video attacking the oil giant's green credentials.The Exxon Files, from Friends of the Earth Europe, sets out claims that the US-based corporation funds climate change deniers in Europe and the US.

David Morrison, 26 September 2007

“We conclude that the Government’s decision not to call for a mutual and immediate cessation of hostilities early on in the Lebanon war has done significant damage to the UK’s reputation in much of the world. As the Minister [Kim Howells] admitted to us, the option of a dual track diplomatic strategy could have succeeded. We believe that such an approach could have led to reduced casualties amongst both Israeli and Lebanese civilians whilst still working towards a long-term solution to the crisis.”

These words are taken from a report by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) published on 25 July 2007 [1].  The report, entitled Global Security: The Middle East, is surprisingly critical of recent British foreign policy towards the region, especially with regard to Lebanon but also Palestine.  It is also very critical of Israel.

The premise of Miller and Dinan's book, laid out in the Introduction, is that PR was created to "take the risk" out of democracy. They point out that PR is overwhelmingly carried out for vested interests, mostly corporations, and that it is not open and transparent about its means or its clients. In its drive to persuade the people that the corporate interest is identical with the public interest, it relies on misinformation, lies, and dirty tricks. One common tactic is the "third-party" technique, in which seemingly independent people or organizations are used to spread a corporate message. The third parties do not disclose their funding or affiliations, and much of the public (and, I'd add, much of the media) has a "blind spot" that prevents them from looking behind the mouthpiece to the source.

Miller and Dinan hope that their book will shine a light into some of the dark corners of covert corporate influence. To that end, it brings together 16 chapters by different writers and activists describing some of the ways in which corporations have deceptively used PR and spin to subvert democracy and work against the public interest. Some of these are summarized below:

17 September 2007

British propaganda outlet

In line with UK policy Bill Rammell asked the Saudi ministers about democratic and social reform. Sipping mint tea in the sumptuous majlis, or parliament, the minister's first attempt to tackle the Saudis on human rights was ignored. Instead, the Saudi ministers emphasised their country's need for welders. The minister took the stonewalling well, seamlessly praising his hosts for limited reforms in local elections, while coaxing them again: when would women get equal opportunity? And when would the Saudi people get the vote?

At this point, the UK Ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, who'd been whispering in the minister's ear throughout, intervened. The Saudi translator, he said, wasn't up to the mark, and had made several mistakes. The ambassador, a fluent Arabic speaker, announced that he would take over as the minister's personal translator, whispering in his ear. Fine for the minister, but impossible for anyone else to hear.