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BBC: SOD the scientific consensus! Look OUT! MEGA TSUNAMI is coming

Money talks and disasters sell, baby

The Trust's Logic

Following the re-transmission of the film on BBC Four last year, photographer Mark Pinder lodged a complaint with the BBC. The film didn't use "the very latest science" at all, Pinder argued, and it selectively ignored 14 years of science which trashes the hypothesis.

He complained that it was irresponsible to present one scientist's views without providing the context and balance.

"I really hope Lord Reith wasn’t watching it from his celestial sofa," Pinder told the BBC in an email, "as I’m pretty sure he’d be doing around 3000rpm at the moment."

The film's executive producer was Tina Fletcher, now Tina Fletcher-Hill, a former Tomorrow's World executive producer and the go-to person at the BBC for science programmes.

She also sits on the board of the former engineering quango, EngineeringUK.

BBC Audience Services has conceded that there was no scientific consensus behind the hypothesis:

"You are quite right when you say there is no consensus on the likelihood or the detailed impact of a mega-tsunami effect from La Cumbre Vieja" wrote Paul Kettle, for the BBC.

However, he pleaded mitigation: the BBC wanted to present the subject to a disinterested audience, explaining that the film was "a ‘what-if ?’ scenario presented in a fashion that would allow the depiction of some quite difficult science ... to an audience that might be less interested in a more detailed, forensic examination or attempt to quantify the probability, scale event and resulting effects of La Cumbre Vieja collapsing".

He also cited a Mesolithic era event (the Storegga Slide) when the continental shelf collapsed, sending a wave crashing into Scotland, although Pinder wasn't impressed: the amount of material in contention in La Palma is at most one-seventh of the volume displaced by the Storegga Slide, Pinder told us.

Pinder had complained that the graphics - of waves crashing into, and toppling New York skyscrapers - were unwarranted.

"The imagery and tone was so over the top, that I half expected Godzilla to make a guest appearance”, Pinder had joked. The Trust's Complaints Director took this as a compliment.

"I imagine viewers would recognise the programme had the deliberate look and feel of a “disaster movie", Kettle replied.

After the ECU rejected the complaint, Pinder escalated the complaint to the Editorial Standards Committee at the BBC Trust. Initially he was rejected and he appealed. A final decision was made by the Trust's standards Committee in September, and published in December. (pdf).

The Trust rejected the complaint, which meant that the BBC Trustees didn't see it. The rejection was made on the advice of an unnamed "Senior Editorial Complaints Advisor" who nevertheless made some very interesting arguments ...

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