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

Is that you, Godzilla?

The Trust's standards Committee turned Pinder's complaint from one of the credibility of the argument, to one about the authority of the scientists making the argument.

"The Committee understood the complainant to feel that neither the scientists nor their views were credible enough to have formed the basis of a television programme," the Trust wrote.

"The Committee did not think that applied in this case as it is not outside the Editorial Guidelines to explore one view on a particular issue in a given programme, as long as it is signposted to the audience that other theories may exist, as happened in this case by phrases such as “some experts believe”.

Was this a fair reflection of the scientific consensus? No scientists reflecting the consensus madae an appearance. The Trust wrote:

"I am not qualified to say if Professor McGuire’s theory is correct but he and his colleagues do appear to have some standing within the relevant scientific community," the Committee decided. [Our emphasis].

The Trust felt that the programme had sufficiently hedged its bets, using the phrases: “Not everyone agrees.  But some experts think …", “Models differ on what the wave might do …” and “no-one knows exactly how great a mega tsunami’s impact would be". The Trust concluded: “The truth is … no one really knows … and hopefully, given that landslide events are fortunately rare, no one soon will get a chance to find out.”

The Trust also repeated the BBC ECU's earlier body swerve: the programme was not actually about the science behind a mega tsunami, but about the science of being hit by water. The Trust decided the film "was not setting out to investigate the likelihood of a mega-tsunami, but the likelihood of surviving such an event."

As to the complaint that the film was "based on the latest scientific research", that was completely ignored in the Trust's decision.

So what does the original complainant, Mark Pinder, think of the verdict.

"Essentially they're being quite slippery," he told us. "I'm a journalist myself -  a photographer and I'd defend to the death the BBC’s right to free speech and to make a program on anything they wish. If some scientist comes to them theorising that the moon is made of camembert, fine. But I would expect a rigorous evidenced based analysis of such claims in return from the programme maker."

Pinder is particularly disappointed in the logic displayed.

"The BBC claimed that they had to use disaster movie style graphics to engage a certain - presumably unsophisticated - audience to what they claim are complex scientific principles, whilst at the same time claiming such an audience is sophisticated enough to recognise the weak caveats and almost non existent qualifications they raise to the claims of the mega-tsunami theorists.

"They can’t have it both ways. This line in self justification is both patronising and insulting.

"Surely research paid for by the insurance industry, who have vested commercial interests in bigging up perceived threat, deserves more critical analysis than these programme makers gave it," says Pinder. "They could claim that they were unaware of the existence of the piles of contrary evidence questioning the mega-tsunami thesis, but this would bring into question the quality of the programme makers research and by extension the BBC’s claims to rigour and authority. It is disingenuous for the BBC to claim that they’ve presented the facts fairly and not planted the idea of a La Palma Mega-tsunami being only a matter of when not if, as the dominant narrative.

"And there's no way they could argue it was 'the latest science'. They ignored that completely."

Throughout his dealings with the BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit, and the BBC Trust, Pinder sensed that the organisation struggled to find anyone prepared to stand up for the film. Perhaps not surprisingly - one reviewer found the juxtaposition of Hollywood CGI and real tsunami footage "gratuitous", describing it as a "hysterical piece of science fantasy".

"It became pretty apparent very early on that their modus operandi was to dissemble and misrepresent, so when their final judgement came through I was not surprised," Pinder concludes. "I think my main disappointment was that nobody at the Beeb was particularly prepared to stand up and honestly defend their programme." ®

Bootnotes

Don't be too hard on the BBC Trust's Editorial Unit. It thoroughly investigated a complaint that an imaginary character in a radio comedy panel show I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue was the victim of sexism.

In that complaint, the BBC emailed the complainer to assure them that "a number of senior figures share, at least in part, your concerns" and the head of BBC comedy had been hauled in to ensure that "changes will be made to the way Samantha is presented in the future."

Historically there's been a huge gulf in quality between factual programming on either side of the Atlantic. Turn on US TV for a history documentary, and it's likely you'll get Nazis … and more Nazis. Tune into an American science programme, and you'll probably be watching a sensational CGI-enhanced Hollywood-style disaster movie, based on the flimsiest scientific evidence - designed to alarm rather than educate. By defending Mega Tsunami in this way, the BBC Trust appears to defend the US approach. So long as a factual includes some credentialed "expert", anything now goes, it seems. ®