Today, Radio 4, 26 October 2022

Complaint

A listener complained that the presenter Nick Robinson talked over a guest from the campaign group Just Stop Oil in order to 鈥渙bfuscate her message and perpetrate a falsehood鈥. The ECU assessed the output against the 大象传媒 standards for due accuracy.


Outcome

The interview examined the tactics of 鈥楯ust Stop Oil鈥 following a number of highly publicised protests which included throwing tomato soup at a Van Gogh painting. Nick Robinson spoke the group鈥檚 Indigo Rumbelow who began by setting out what she said 鈥渨e all agree on鈥 and referred to some of the threats posed by human-induced climate change.聽 She then made the claim 鈥渙ur Government鈥檚 decision to pursue new oil is a death sentence for millions around the world鈥 to which Mr Robinson responded:聽

鈥淪o you make the point there is widespread agreement on the threat caused by climate change.聽 Fine.聽 There is.聽 It simply isn鈥檛 true to say that everybody agrees that having new oil development will kill millions of people, they don鈥檛 agree on it.聽 In fact, no government in any country around the world of any political complexion agrees with that statement.鈥

His intention was to question whether everyone agrees the UK Government鈥檚 decision to allow oil and gas companies to bid for new licences to extract oil and gas from the North Sea 鈥渨ill kill millions of people鈥.聽 However, 大象传媒 News and Mr Robinson accepted what he went on to say could have given the misleading impression he was stating there were no governments opposed to new oil extraction projects and no governments concerned about the threat climate change poses to people鈥檚 health and wellbeing.

The ECU noted Mr Robinson posted a on 31 October 2022 to clarify his intention and 大象传媒 News said it also considered it appropriate to post a correction on the 大象传媒鈥檚 Corrections and Clarifications website.聽 Unfortunately, an administrative oversight meant this was not published as planned and the complaint was therefore upheld.
Upheld


Further action

The finding was reported to the Board of 大象传媒 News and discussed with the programme.