Harrabin Ignores BBC Guidelines On Cooling Tower Images
By Paul Homewood
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29985382
The BBC have been up to their usual, dishonest tricks again, with photos suggesting black smoke coming out of power station cooling towers.
Reader, Ron Hughes, has formally complained, and has received some helpful information from Colin Tregear, who works with the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit.
The Editorial Guidelines have a section on images, containing this specific guideline for accuracy:
Care should be taken not to use images to mislead the audience.
This could not be clearer, and it is difficult to see how the above picture does not mislead.
But the case of cooling tower images has already specifically been addressed in a BBC Trust finding on a Panorama programme in 2008. Below are the Trust’s findings:
The Trust noted that guidance had already been issued by BBC News on how to deal with footage of cooling towers:
So as well as requesting that extra care be taken, there was specific guidance not to use such photos in headlines, which, of course, has been deliberately breached in the current story.
The Trust, after considering all the facts, upheld the complaint.
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/appeals/esc_bulletins/2009/july.pdf
So Roger Harrabin, or whoever put the report together for him, has clearly and blatantly breached both the specific guidelines issued, as well as the duty not to use images to mislead the audience.
It would be helpful if others registered formal complaints in future if they see similar images on BBC reports. The process is quite simple, and complaints can be made online here.
It would help to quote both the Editorial Guidelines here, and the specific BBC Trust ruling, quoting “Panorama: Comeback Coal, BBC One, 1 December 2008 “
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Reblogged this on JunkScience.com and commented:
Everyone wants their arty shots of droplets of water (aka steam) coming from the towers to show pollution.
Roger Harrabin is an A1 ‘churnalist’
Reblogged this on Wolsten and commented:
I wonder what proportion of our tax payer’s licence fee goes into funding the BBC propaganda (whoops environmental) unit? Whatever it is – it is too much!
But does the picture depict a “cooling tower”?
It would be nice to know exactly what it does depict.
Having said that, the back lit image probably makes it misleading. whatever it is.
The tower in the image is not a cooling tower but the exhaust flu.
However, the exhaust looks far too dark to be real – which could be the lighting angle.
Can anyone track down this photo?
I’m beginning to wonder whether it is even a power station. I certainly don’t remember seeing anything like this in the UK.
Paul
The Beeb has used that particular image on numerous occasions:-
1. “Owen Paterson in ‘lights out’ warning over emissions target” – 16/10/14 – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29623648
2. “Ed Davey urges EU to lead climate change fight” – 13/4/14 – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27008750
3. “National Grid margins expected to be ‘lower this winter'” – 28/10/14 – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29798227
4. “Is GDP the least worst alternative?” – 16/7/14 – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28322347
5. “Climate change ‘Dragons’ Den’: What are the options?” – 29/11/10 – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11868411
6. “Phishing attack nets 3 million euros of carbon permits” – 3/2/2010 – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8497129.stm
And that was from just 6 our of 20 pages of similar images.
All anyone can tell from that cropped image is that its a flue. Insufficient info to determine whether is coal, oil, gas or biomass being burnt; or, whether it’s a power station or industrial complex.
Paul while you are tracking BBC bias Phillip Bratby highlighted that a BBCAustralia story on the G20 when I checked article was written by freelancers whose have form for outputting Climate propaganda
more on our log of BBC, where I also linked to your articles http://www.bishop-hill.net/discussion/post/2268211?currentPage=3#post2437215
The (UK) Clean Air Act prohibits the emission of visible particulates. That picture is almost certainly of colourless water vapour, and has visible impact suggesting pollution to the uninitiated, simply because it is back lit.
This BBC image used to illustrate a different environmental story was published in October 2103:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24742770
Doh! October 2013. My pfingerfuffel.
Britons, why do you still tolerate a state funded agency ciontinuing lying to population without restraint? Put their building on fire and call irish saboteurs to help !
Paul:
Good and useful summary of the problem (and inherent misrepresentation that so often goes on).
One question: in the way the BBC operates, how likely is it that Harrabin is responsible for selecting a picture that that goes with the article?
(It’s a genuine question: so often, for example, headlines do not reflect an article’s actual substance, but the article’s author is not in control of the headline – I was wondering if the same pertains to picture selection.)
Dear Mr Homewood, These particular pics don’t look to me like cooling towers but like proper chimneys emitting real smoke. Cooling towers, to favour the thermodynamic processes they contain and encourage, have a quite distinctive shape and these don’t at all hav ethis shape but are ordinary vertical cylinders as chimneys mostly are. Having said that, may I assure you I’m an ardent reader of all your admirable posts which I find fascinating and very informative. And I’m most definitely a ‘denier’! Dr Harold Hughes (a chartered chemical engineer who’s operated a cooling tower)
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 17:19:48 +0000 To: hwdh@msn.com
Well, using tineye to search, the oldest version it found of this photo is listed as th 43016803 eggboroughplant pa 203b.jpg with an associated date of April 15 2008 in photobucket. Whether or not that is original …? But looking at the photo of Eggborough on wiki, there is a tower that looks like it and the cooling towers look a lot different.
Got it!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/10408020/Chinese-firm-prepares-bid-for-coal-fired-power-station.html
As you say – it’s Eggborough Power Station, a coal fired plant near Selby. That’s if Emily Gosden of the Torygraph has used the right image.
Contrast the white steam/smoke coming out from the “normal ” photograph, with the black stuff in the BBC’s backlit version.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-26173142
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29985382
The BBC has a habit of using dubious images in relation to “climate change”, usually behind someone who is arguing against it.
There is footage of a helicopter in a snowstorm which looks like it’s cgi from a feature film but I haven’t been able to identify it. Certainly nothing to do with climate change.
That is a picture of a 3 flue Cylindrical concrete chimney as built in several power stations from the mid1960s onwards, such as Aberthaw, Drax, Eggborough…..
Didcot was a 4 Flue -see pic – http://tinyurl.com/kzwe8cz
This is cooling towers …evaporating ……..water vapor –
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ1-bTe8VxrCrBE6ynYV9fkM_uwlfVkZsEpcprrBNzGgRmtB6-1bA
What a sad old git, I really must get out more !!!
CO2 is transparant and odourless, Flue gasses are scrubbed for particles, and sulfur dioxide. The visible cloud is therefore water vapour. The picture is misleading, even if it is a flue-gas stack.
Harrabin is dangerous
The issue is we all fund him via the TVPollTax
I thought I remembered a web article about this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/25/photoshopping-in-the-worseness/
Apparently it’s been photoshopped to adjust the contrast.
Pretty much a smoking gun … er, chimney stack. Pretty clear dead to rights what has been done.
Wow its good to see this sort of free co operation
Its sad to see that in 21st cent Britain, state funded propaganda exists on such a level
It appears much of the rest of the media are complicit in this also :{
The pic shows a flue stack or chimney if you prefer not cooling tower
. As has been correctly pointed out scrubbers remove SO2 & electrostatic precipitators remove fly ash. There is no smoke because the boilers run at high temperatures ensuring almost complete (stoichiometric) combustion. When any hydrocarbon is burned water is produced & that’s what can be seen in the picture – rather like the con trail from a plane. Of course there will be CO2 & Nox (oxides of Nitrogen) within the flue gases, some power stations use urea to reduce Nox I don’t know if Eggborough does.
So, what does it mean that the complaint is upheld? Does Harrabin get a note in his ‘personal record’?
He gets thrashed senseless with a dead lettuce …. oh, wait – maybe the lettuce might not be required.
I think the picture is a fake – a “montage”. If it was a stack gas from combustion the thermal content and the draught from the chimney would shoot the exhaust out a quite a rate so the exhaust is vertical at first. Only a very strong wind would force this horizontal so near the stack exit – this clearly isn ‘t the case here.
This picture is a very badly photo-shopped job, not an original photo. Check out the “smoke” coming out at the top of the chimney. On both sides of the chimney, especially the left one, the “smoke” is coming out of the sides of the chimney — several inches below the top. In reality, the “smoke” would be coming out of the top of the chimney. This is an obvious fake.