Complaint
This bulletin included a report by the BBC’s Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt in which he said “we should all be worried about the way our climate is changing”. A viewer complained this remark was an improper expression of a personal opinion on a controversial matter. The ECU considered whether the broadcast met the editorial standards for impartiality set out in the BBC Editorial Guidelines.
Outcome
The Guidelines allow specialist correspondents, such as Justin Rowlatt, to offer “professional judgements, rooted in evidence”. In this case his report set out the evidence from the European Commission’s climate monitoring body, Copernicus2, which showed mean global temperatures last year were 1.6 degrees higher than the pre-industrial average, and alluded to some of the extreme weather events which occurred during 2024 such as floods in the UK and Spain and fires in Los Angeles.
In light of the evidence which suggests human-induced climate change is leading to a rise in average global temperatures (which, in turn, is expected to lead to more, or more severe, extreme weather events), Mr Rowlatt’s conclusion was therefore a reasonable professional judgement and clearly evidence-based.
Not Upheld