The video was directed by Martin Durkin. Durkin's history is bad. He's basically the british version of John Stossel. In 1997, he produced a documentary, titled Against Nature, which was nothing but an anti-evironmental screed. The claims made in that video quickly fell apart as interviewees for the piece complained that they were taken out of context and misrepresented as critics of environmentalism. Another piece claimed silicone implants were harmless.
George Monbiot, The Guardian:
Mr Durkin has often been acused of taking liberties with the facts. In 1997 he made a series for Channel 4 called Against Nature, which compared environmentalists like me to Nazis, conspiring against the world's poor. No one would suggest that green claims should not be subjected to critical examination, but the people he interviewed were lied to about the contents of the programmes and given no chance to respond to the accusations the series made.
The Independent Television Commission handed down one of the most damning verdicts it has ever reached: the programme makers "distorted by selective editing" the views of the interviewees and "misled" them about the "content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part". Channel 4 was forced to make a humiliating prime time apology. After the series was broadcast, I discovered that the assistant producer and several of its interviewees worked for the rightwing libertarian magazine masquerading as Living Marxism, which has just been successfully sued by ITN. All the arguments Against Nature made had been rehearsed in LM.
Now, Durkin is accused of doing exactly the same thing with The Great Global Warming Swindle. Some people never learn...
[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
