Andrew Neil: TV news needs less climate change PR

THE BBC and other UK broadcasters have become “the PR department of Greenpeace” with their coverage of climate change, Andrew Neil has claimed.

The former BBC and GB News presenter also said British broadcasters had colluded in the “conspiracy theory” that the Kremlin helped Donald Trump to win the presidency and refused to tell the truth about the origins of Covid-19.

In a speech to a media forum, Neil took a swipe at his most recent employer, GB News, saying the station had become a “Ukip tribute band”.

Addressing media coverage of the environment, he said: “In covering climate change, we are no longer journalists – we are basically the PR department of Greenpeace. You don’t need to be a global warming sceptic to challenge what’s coming out.

“Look at the BBC and Sky, and coverage of the [foreign minister] of Tuvalu. He does a press conference [at Cop26] standing in water to make out his islands are about to go under.

“Nobody pointed out there was a report that came out in 2018 which showed, in the last four years, the land mass in his islands has increased by 70 hectares. Wasn’t that worth looking at? But, no, we just did it as a piece of PR.”

Speaking to the Freeview Outside the Box conference, Neil said that the BBC, Sky and US broadcasters “peddled, basically, conspiracy theories for two-anda-half years that Mr Trump had only got to the White House because the Kremlin was behind him”.

He went on: “For the first year or so of the Covid crisis, if you raised questions that there was more to it than just coincidence that Wuhan and Covid were in the same place, you were a sinophobe, a conspiracy theorist, and you weren’t allowed to get on to the mainstream media. It’s quite clear now that Wuhan played a major part.

“If we want to be referees, if we want to be gatekeepers to call ‘the nutters’ to account – and there are plenty on the right and the left, the anti-vaxxers and all the rest – we need to get our own house in order.”

Speaking of his acrimonious departure from GB News he said hehas one last TV job in him, because “I don’t want GB News to be a full stop in my broadcasting career”.

Joining the station was “the biggest single mistake of my career,” he said. The launch was a “shambles” and there is a danger that the station will “just slide into irrelevance and obscurity”.

Asked if GB News had filled a gap in the market, he replied: “To fill a gap, you have to have an audience.”