HORROR HARRABIN - Biased BBC

HORROR HARRABIN: "Yesterday Richard North, of the blog EU Referendum, appeared on the Gaby Logan show on Radio 5 to discuss the setting up of the UEA panel to investigate Climategate. That's pretty amazing in its own right, although one swallow does not make a summer. Richard, as would be expected, was pretty formidable, but what was fascinating about the exchanges was the contribution of Roger Harrabin. I'm including the relevant section in full because it has to be seen to be believed. Note especially his pathetic attempts at obfuscation and his rapid descent into claims of insults. What insults?

Mr Harrabin opened his contribution by stating that the CRU emails had been 'stolen'. Richard rightly took exception to this, and pointed out that the latest evidence suggested an internal leak:

. . . we’ve had wonderful theories about intelligence agencies and hackers and this and that and the other – this is prejudicing the inquiry, against the reality is that it is probably an internal job and to talk about stolen emails and hackers and all the rest is, I think, distorting the debate and not helping the listener and the general public understand what has been going on.

Gaby Logan: Roger, do you take that.

Roger Harrabin: I would like to know what the better term would be? They’ve been referred to consistently as stolen emails, I know there are other theories about, that there was an inside job. The fact is that they were private emails not for publication, and the people who had them published on the internet considered them to have been stolen, they’d been referred to as being stolen. I’m not sure what else we would call them . . . This is another one of these things where you probably need a sentence rather than a word . . .

RN: Roger, sorry . . .

RH: I think this is not a helpful . . . honestly, this is not a helpful debate at the moment to talk about whether they’ve been stolen or not. A review has been set up . . . .

RN: (interjects) Well, then don’t refer to it as being stolen.

RH: Can we . . . I think we should be thinking today, and this is how this gets bogged down in arguments, please, please, it would be a change as well if we could get into a debate without having insults as well, that would be a nice change.

RN: Well, all the . . .

GL: Sorry, sorry, could we just let Roger . . .

RN: Well all the point I’m making, Roger, is stop prejudicing the debate. You are making an assumption in your terminology.

I simply love that Roger seems to think that because the emails have been called 'stolen'(by him, mainly!)that this is the best way to describe them. And the point of balanced journalism is, Mr Harrabin?

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