Complaint to Ofcom Regarding “The Great Global Warming Swindle”Appendix C: Backgrounds of the Contributors to the Programme |
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So for all these reasons, the programme’s failure to declare the links many of its contributors have to the fossil fuel industry and to lobby groups funded by the fossil fuel industry is in serious breach of the provisions of the 2003 Communications Act regarding Channel 4’s remit for its programmes to be educational, and therefore not to be intentionally misleading; and in serious breach of section 5.7 of the Broadcasting Code regarding not misrepresenting facts. |
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C.1.4 |
Links to Lobby GroupsTo use an analogy, had a scientific documentary had, as one of its main contributors, a scientist who was also a leading member of Greenpeace; and had the documentary not declared that scientist’s involvement with Greenpeace, there would have been a justifiable outcry, on the basis that the omission would have misled the public about the perceived impartiality of that scientist. The failure of the Channel 4 programme to mention that most of the contributors work for lobby groups (most of which are funded by the fossil fuel industry) that are actively lobbying governments and the public against taking any action to reduce CO2 emissions, and which in some cases are also spending millions of pounds on advertising campaigns that use misinformation to convince the public that there is no need to reduce carbon emissions (e.g. see http://tinyurl.com/nvaep, http://tinyurl.com/ch83s and http://tinyurl.com/j45yg), was in clear breach of the 2003 Communications Act, and of sections 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, 5.8, 5.9, 5.10, 5.11 and 5.12 of the Broadcasting Code. |
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Appendix C.1.4]
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Final Revision |
Last updated: 11 Jun 2007 |