In this guest post for the Media Reform Coalition, Tom Hardy from Extinction Rebellion unpicks the BBC’s dismissal of the Restore Nature Now march, and reflects on the past 14 years of failed climate coverage under the Corporation’s conservative leadership.

Pop quiz: which items were featured on BBC News on 22 June 2024?

A. Puppies given oxygen masks after building fire
B. New record declared in nettle eating contest
C. Should live football broadcasts disrupt news bulletins?
D. The largest climate and nature march in history, as all environmental NGOs speak with one voice.

As you can probably tell, the answer was all but the last. The Restore Nature Now march received extensive coverage from other media outlets, with over 150 pieces featured across print, broadcast and online news. However, the BBC team, including reporter Alex Forster who recorded interviews with representatives of the organising groups, did not have their footage broadcast. Editors informed the team that their story had been spiked due to “a particularly busy day” in politics and sport.

This editorial dismissal was reinforced by the BBC’s stock response to the many public complaints they received. “Many marches take place around the UK every day,” it said, “and unfortunately it isn’t possible to cover each one. Whether we provide coverage of a particular march depends on editorial decisions over the day, looking at factors such as breaking news stories or an update to a recent news story.” The stories the BBC did choose to cover gives a sense of just how “busy” 22 June was for news.

The thinking behind such editorial decisions became clear during Extinction Rebellion’s “The Big One” demonstration last year. A BBC reporter on the ground then asked the XR media team where they anticipated “trouble.” When informed that the event was meant to be peaceful and inclusive, the reporter revealed that his editor had directed him not to cover it if that was the case.

Best practices for climate coverage

Such skewed decision-making was not apparent at Channel 4, which provided serious coverage in line with the guidance from Covering Climate Now (CCN). This organisation, dedicated to promoting best practices in climate reporting, includes as signatories over 500 respected news outlets worldwide, of which Channel 4 is one. In its guidance, it advises climate journalists to “treat activists like newsmakers”:

“In some newsrooms there is a belief that covering activism is itself a form of activism or bias. That traditional mindset deserves a second look. Covering a protest, voter registration drive, or similar action does not make a journalist an activist any more than covering a football game makes them an athlete.”

Covering Climate Now ‘Best practices for Climate Journalism’

It also warns that journalists should take extra care not to fall for spin, highlighting that “that politicians, CEOs, and other powerful interests always have an agenda — complete with pre-rehearsed talking points — when they speak to the press.” “To avoid getting played,” the CCN adds, “do your homework: Research their previous public statements, ask independent experts where the truth lies, and then don’t be afraid to push back.”

It is instructive to compare the BBC’s approach to that of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK). Aligning with the ethos of CCN, NRK recently adopted a non-neutral stance on climate change reporting in response to audience demand for improved coverage. As a result, NRK’s climate stories now regularly attract more views than the rest of the newsroom’s content. Reuters’ Katherine Dunn notes:

“In 2023, stories produced by the organisation’s climate teams outperformed the average story on the website in 11 months out of 12, often dramatically. The experience of NRK, as the broadcaster is known, seems to undercut a pervasive myth among many news organisations: that audiences simply aren’t interested in climate change journalism.”

Flat earthers welcome

For the BBC, however, this audience disinterest myth has been disingenuously propagated by figures within the broadcaster itself. These senior plays have helped to obfuscate and block calls for climate action urgency, at the expense of increasingly tarnishing the Corporation’s reputation for truth-telling.

Under the leadership of Director-General Tim Davie (a former Conservative council candidate) and the oversight of former Chairman Richard Sharp (Tory mega-donor and alumnus of the climate science-denying Centre for Policy Studies), the BBC has weaponised its core tenet of ‘impartiality’. This value is now reframed as ‘both-sideism’, where all opinions are given equal weight even if it denies esablished scientific fact.

This reframing was ushered in by David Jordan, the BBC’s Director of Editorial Policy and Standards, who in 2022 suggested that “flat earthers” would be welcome to contribute. Far from Jordan’s naively benign ideal of “ensuring that viewpoints are heard from all different perspectives”, this policy has normalised the anti-scientific views of fossil fuel-funded think-tanks as merely ‘one side of the debate’. These climate-wrecking Tufton Street spokespeople are both pushing for the abolition of net zero targets and, through the likes of Policy Exchange, responsible for increasingly authoritarian changes in law regarding peaceful protest.

However, ‘both-sideism’ rarely extends to economic debates, where the narratives of essential GDP growth, the primacy of finance, and fickle metaphors comparing public spending to credit cards remain immutable and unchallenged. This policy of false balance also only ever seems to benefit those on one particular side of the cynical climate ‘debate’. A camera team on the Restore Nature Now march intimated that Justin Rowlatt, the BBC’s first ever Climate Editor, had been forbidden from attending on the basis this would have broken the Corporation’s impartiality rules. Presumably this should mean that Chris Mason, the BBC’s Political Editor, or Laura Kuenssberg, host of its flagship Sunday political programme, might be forbidden from reporting from the Houses of Parliament, lest they be partial to democracy.

Censorship and climate denial at the top of the BBC

Central to this pattern of climate censorship is the BBC Board’s member for England, Robbie Gibb. Appointed to the BBC’s top body by Boris Johnson, Gibb was Theresa May’s Director of Communications in Downing Street and a founding figure in GB News. He has been described by former Newsnight anchor Emily Maitlis as an “active agent of the Conservative Party”, and acts as an enforcer and influencer across the BBC’s news output. Former BBC journalist Lewis Goodall claimed Gibb “made life really difficult” when Goodall’s reporting failed to follow the government line.

Former environmental reporter Roger Harrabin has also spoken of climate stories being spiked if a denier could not be found to rebut the science on air. This runs completely counter to any basic ideals of impartiality or truth-telling, embedded in the CCN’s central tenet: “Do not platform climate denialists”:

“Platforming climate deniers in an effort to “balance” our coverage not only misleads the public, it is inaccurate. There is simply no good-faith argument against climate science. And if one accepts the science, one cannot deny the need for rapid, forceful action. Stories or op-eds that dispute the scientific consensus, or ridicule climate activism, don’t belong in news outlets.”

Covering Climate Now ‘Best practices for Climate Journalism’

However, some revealing reporting occasionally slips past the Robbie Gibb’s red pen. During an episode of BBC’s Inside Science in the week following the march, sociologist Dana Fisher spoke of how protest movements succeed. Fisher discussed how non-violent direct actions (NVDAs) that she dubbed as ‘shockers’ were necessary to draw media attention, as even a critical piece will also publicise the goals and aims of the group:

“If you compare the media coverage of those [NVDA] actions, versus the media coverage for the 100,000 or so people who were legally demonstrating in the streets of London last week, and you’ll see that this is exactly why these kinds of performative actions were being used. They’re getting a lot more media attention.”

Zoe Williams of the Guardian summed up the irony succinctly: “When you prioritise [reporting] the destructive over the peaceful – even just to heap noisy shame upon it – you’re proving what you decry: that orange flour is the only way to get noticed.”

Party politics vs. progressive policies

Of course, the ultimate goal extends beyond mere media coverage: it’s about transforming public support. For instance, at the height of Extinction Rebellion’s major protests in 2019, concern about the environment surged to record levels. During the summer of 2023, when Just Stop Oil was particularly active, environmental issues ranked as high as third in the Ipsos Issues Index of public concerns, trailing only the economy and inflation.

The BBC’s apparent disregard for the climate and nature crisis extends beyond its non-coverage of the Restore Nature Now march. Not a single question about climate was posed to the leaders during the BBC’s final head-to head election debate. Green co-leader Adrian Ramsey criticised the broadcaster for downplaying the climate crisis by not holding a dedicated debate on the issue, as was done in 2019: “With every day bringing more evidence of climate breakdown. We rely on the BBC to ignore fossil fuel lobby pressure and present voters with the facts to help them choose how to use their vote.”

We call on a new government to cut out the rot in the BBC, and to remove the operatives and enforcers of Tufton Street from the management of the BBC, and to put into statute stronger protections for the BBC’s independence. The much-vaunted ‘impartiality’’ protocol is worthless unless it applies to all tiers of the organisation. Finally, we call on the corporation to heed the call of Covering Climate Now:

“As the climate crisis accelerates and the journalism landscape rapidly evolves, we invite all journalists and newsrooms worldwide — newsletters as well as newspapers, social media as well as television, independent investigative sites as well as a reader-funded non-profits — to join the Covering Climate Now community and help your fellow journalists produce exceptional work that engages audiences, holds power to account, and inspires change.”

As former CEO of the Norwegian broadcaster NRK Thor Gjermund Eriksen warns fellow broadcasters around the world: “The risk of losing legitimacy is bigger if we don’t do this than if we do.”

• Header image credit: Garry Knight, licenced under Creative Commons.