In an update to this post, Melanie Phillips carries a recently released statement from the ministry of truth:
A publicist for BBC News has asked me to post up the following statement:Looks like hogwash to me.
A minor change was made to the 'Global temperatures "to decrease'' ' piece on our website to better reflect the science. A few people including the report's authors, the World Meteorological Organisation, pointed out to us that the earlier version had been ambiguous.
For a start, it wasn't "a minor change", the story was completely rewritten. And it's not at all clear to me what "ambiguous" means in this instance. The original piece, as I recall, was straightforward and factual.
In any case, I'm no happier with the knowledge that the World Meteorological Organization has this level of editorial influence over the BBC (revising and rewriting news stories after they have been published) than I am with the idea of some smug activist twisting the arm of a BBC journalist to get a rewrite.
Editorial independence used to be one of the BBC's principles.
