Be afraid, be very afraid.
James Harding, the director of BBC news and current affairs, has delivered a speech in which he has said the BBC’s ambition is to double the reach of the World Service in the next eight years: He stated:
“Internationally, Sir Howard Stringer has been looking at how we can take the BBC’s global audience of roughly 250 million people to 500 million by 2022. He will report his findings next month. It has made me feel extremely privileged and proud to see the way in which the return of the World Service to licence fee funding has prompted us to reaffirm our commitment to delivering news to audiences of need around the world, to commit to a protected and, preferably, growing budget and to explore how to deliver more of the World Service’s journalism to audiences at home.”
To be sure, the World Service is enjoyed by many, and is thought by some to deliver an important United Kingdom perspective on world events. But in recent years, it has transmuted into something very different: an integral part of the ‘development culture’ which sees providing aid and services to the developing world as a mission founded four-square on liberal political objectives.
Sweeping claims – what evidence is there to support them? The framework is actually well established and not hidden, as we have previously noted on this site. The World Service operates hand in glove with its charitable arm BBC Media Action, an organisation which its website shows works flat out with NGOs and other sundry agitators around the world (under the guise of working for ‘human rights’). It attracts bucket loads of cash for its objectives from both the EU and the government Department of International Development. Among its main aims is to spread the primary ‘climate change’ message, essentially that we are all going to die unless we stop burning fossil fuel and mend our wicked capitalist ways.
In that respect a main cheerleader alongside Mr Harding is BBC Trustee Richard Ayre, a former BBC news executive who was also for many years involved in Article 19, an international campaigning organisation which sees as a major part of its goals the enforcement of international environmental law – in essence, the climate change agenda.
An example of this work by the BBC’s Media Action arm is this survey. They have set in train an ‘education’ project across six major countries in Asia which is about spreading the word about ‘climate change’ and aims to trigger people to take action against it. What this means in practice is that the BBC are providing propaganda tools to reach and terrify schoolchildren on a massive scale. In Nepal, for example, young kids are being systematically trained as militant activists.This is described as foillows:
“Project: “Child Voices: Children of Nepal Speak Out on Climate Change Adaptation” by Children in a Changing Climate and Action Aid.
Objectives:The purpose of the project was to make children’s concerns heard, and to persuade decision-makers to incorporate children’s adaptation needs into policy-making.
Target Audience: Target audiences included local communities for awareness raising; local decision-makers, NGOs and UN agencies for advocacy; and policymakers for policy change.
Project Design: Poor children in rural and urban areas of Nepal were supported to make short films about how climate change is being experienced by their communities. Making these films allowed children to explore how the changing climate is impacting them and their families, how they are coping, and what they need in order to adapt.
Communication: Messages centred on the need for advocacy on children’s adaptation needs.
Partners: Children in a Changing Climate is a coalition of leading child-focused research, development and humanitarian organisations
Channels & Formats: The films were shown in local communities, featured on TV and are available online. A report was also produced based on the findings of the participatory video project.
Impact: The use of participatory video (1) helped children in Nepal better understand climate change impacts (2) helped prioritise their adaptation needs, and (3) helped advocate for change. The children successfully used their videos to gain adaptation funding, for example for a bridge to help children get to school during the monsoon season. At the national level, the report and videos supported an ongoing dialogue with the government on child rights and climate change where it was agreed that children need to be a priority group in Nepal’s National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA).”
Of course, anything that genuinely improves the lives of the poor is Nepal is to be welcomed; the bridge was no doubt needed. But they also desperately need access to cheap energy and fuel, the most effective way of ending deprivation – and the climate change movement does not want that; they insist that the only acceptable energy generation is via vastly expensive ‘green’ schemes.
So what Mr Harding actually means when he talks about World Service expansion is that BBC journalists are gearing up to indoctrinate ever-larger audiences with BBC-NGO values that include as a central component climate change alarmism.
