THE BBC is "failing" the public in its climate reporting, Green Party leader Zack Polanski has said, after the broadcaster opted not to stream his press conference about people facing drought last week.
Polanski called an emergency press conference to blast oil and gas companies “who are profiting from fuelling" wildfires which have ripped across Scotland and England in recent weeks.
He called for urgent measures to support people affected by droughts, which now include almost three-quarters of England.
But he hit out at the BBC during an appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe, saying that the broadcaster gives Nigel Farage’s Reform UK much more coverage than his party.
He said the BBC "completely ignored" his press conference and did not stream "a single thing about it".
Speaking exclusively to The National, Polanski said the BBC is failing to inform the public about the truth about climate change as part of an "insidious" agenda.
He said: "It’s interesting the BBC in the past have done investigations – internal investigations – into the economy, into the way they report on migration and Brexit, and I’d really like to see them do one on the climate crisis.
"For far [too long], presenting a scientist and then someone who is a climate denier was considered balance. It feels, in superficial terms, we’ve moved on from that now but, in many ways, I don’t think we have because we know that far too often coverage of the climate crisis has been about people on beaches having a great time in this heatwave.
"We’ve hardly heard this figure of the thousands of people who are estimated to have been killed from excess heat just in the past couple of months alone. So I think the [major] broadcasters are failing in their duty to inform the public of the truth and of the science, and far too often they’re more interested in tittle-tattle stories about who’s in and who’s out at Westminster as opposed to actually reporting the truth the climate scientists are repeatedly saying about the existential threat to our planet."
The National reported last month how the BBC News page on UK heatwaves simply presents you with a number of articles on how to keep cool in hot weather, what hot weather does to the body, how to get a good night’s sleep in hot weather and what to do if someone has heatstroke.
Meanwhile, England is on track to record its highest ever number of heat-related deaths this summer after the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) announced that an estimated 2877 people had died in the May and June heatwaves.
Polanski went on to say there has been a "denigration of trust" between the public and the BBC because of its "overreporting" on Reform.
He criticised the BBC for allowing "billionaire-owned" newspapers to set its news agenda.
"It's really important we have a public service broadcaster but what’s happened is the denigration of trust because of years now of overreporting on Reform," he said.
"I think the most obvious example is Question Time, the constant seat that is given to a Reform spokesperson. But sometimes we miss the point if we just focus on Question Time; I think it’s much more insidious than that.
"I think it’s daily, I think it’s in the commentary around British politics, I think it’s constantly through the frame of what Reform are saying, or there is a much bigger problem where The Telegraph or The Times or the Mail will put something on their front page and then the BBC allow those billionaire-owned newspapers to set the news agenda.
"It’s corrosive to our political discourse and our national conversation."
In the interview with Iain Dale at the Fringe, Polanski also slated the BBC for placing wildfires lower down on the BBC website than its coverage of an incident in which the Green Party had inadvertently shared an image of a man wearing a T-shirt showing a guillotine with a message about “making plans for Nigel”.
At the press conference last week, he said Burnham must commit to blocking plans to exploit the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields, in a challenge that will be put to the Labour Government in Westminster as well as posing questions for John Swinney’s SNP administration in Edinburgh.
The Prime Minister said that "we can't ignore" the fossil fuel resources in the North Sea during a phone call with US President Donald Trump, who has demanded the UK exploit its oil and gas reserves.
Swinney meanwhile has called on Labour to scrap the energy windfall tax, despite firms posting massive profits as prices soared in response to the war in Iran, after BP announced it was quitting the declining basin.
The BBC has been approached for comment.
