Newsnight feels the heat over Emma Thompson’s ‘inaccurate’ climate claims

Oh dear. Although BBC presenters tend to shrug off most accusations of bias as nonsense, staff at Newsnight are going to have to rethink their approach when it comes to reporting on climate change. A paper by the BBC Trust has urged the corporation to ensure that ‘presenters are able to confidently challenge misleading/ inaccurate statistical claims made by interviewees’.

They go on to cite Emma Thompson’s appearance on Newsnight as an example of when not enough was done to challenge faulty views. In an interview with Emily Maitlis, the Oscar-winning luvvie made statements about climate change:

‘If they [oil companies] take out of the earth all the oil they want to take out, you look at the science. Our temperature will rise four degrees Celsius by 2030, and that’s not sustainable.’

However, the Trust point out that she ought to have been challenged as what she said was, at best, inaccurate. Scientific research has showed that temperature rise is more likely to occur over a longer period of time — ‘by the end of the century’. While