8/15/25 update added, see near the end of this post, BBC responds.

At my little GelbspanFiles blog here, I have limited reach to reading audiences, not many people across the United States and around the world are aware of my efforts showing how the ‘industry-corrupted, liars-for-hire skeptic climate scientists‘ accusation falls apart around the core clique of enviro-activists promulgating it. Thus, I’m always indebted to any outlet that can reproduce my blog posts or mention my work in some way to much wider audiences. In this situation, I’m indebted to Roger “Tallbloke” Tattersall – most famous for being one of a few recipients of the notorious second batch of “ClimateGate emails” – for reproducing my July 14 blog post about the BBC for his UK readers. As I wrote in my piece, it’s suspect that the BBC removed the specific phrase which was the central focus of my 2020-2021 official complaint 2+ years after my complaint was deemed to have no grounds to support it.

But I don’t just write about these things, I try to get something done. I refiled my complaint with the BBC.

When filing a complaint to that network, their system asks if it concerns a complaint that’s already on file. I placed the number they assigned to me back in 2020 into their online complaint form two days ago, upon which their system said, in effect, “File? What file??” So, from hitting that immediate roadblock, I went through the process of filing a new one. The central text of my complaint is as follows (although I highlight the key words in red for emphasis here, but the rest of it is as sent to the BBC, including the all-caps words):

I have actually filed a complaint on this, your form now says my claim # CAS-6241179-K0Y8J5 “does not match what BBC has on file.” The current situation is that apparently BBC/Radio4 altered the Aug 2020 report headline “How They Made Us Doubt Everything Episode 6 ‘Reposition Global Warming as theory, not fact‘ ” 2+ years AFTER my complaint about how that specific accusation headline was false — BBC’s Colin Tregear deemed my complaint as ‘having no grounds’ to prompt a correction or to pull the episode report and told me to take the next step of filing the complaint with Ofcom, which I did. I never heard a word from Ofcom.

The BBC/Radio4 webpage for that episode 6 now reads “The Tobacco Playbook: 6. From Fact to Theory” — tantamount to an admission by BBC that there was INDEED A MAJOR FAULT with the original title.

I was speaking about this BBC program title swap.

Such is the sheer effectiveness beauty of that ‘memo phrase,’ there’s not doubt about its implication of being smoking gun evidence of fossil fuel industry efforts to deceive the public about the certainty of man-caused global warming. You do not swap out a killer phrase like that for something more vague.

Unless you know there is a fatal fault with the specific wording and you need to hide your culpability for spreading disinformation.

To their credit, the BBC assigned a new case number for my complaint.

Question is, are they going to pretend like this is not itself a problem for what was clearly a problem before?

The BBC told its audience that the fossil fuel industry deliberately deceived the public – paying skeptic scientists to reposition ‘an established factual science situation’ back to ‘theory.’ No such thing occurred.

If the BBC knows the central accusation of their report cannot be supported, and sources from a hugely dubious, biased source harboring an unmistakable vendetta against the fossil fuel industry, then they need to apologize to the world about the false report and tell everyone the whole truth about the entire matter.
————————————————————————
[Author’s 8/15/25 addition]
To their credit, the BBC did reply to my renewed complaint, on 8/12, verbatim as follows. I’ve highlighted the key excuse in boldface text:

Reference CAS-8152195-W6V6R8
Dear Mr Cook,
Thank you for contacting us about BBC Radio’s How They Made Us Doubt Everything – The Tobacco Playbook: 6. From Fact to Theory.

In answer to your comments, the change in title was a practical necessity brought about by the publication of a new series and is not connected to your original complaint or an admission that the previous title was a mistake.

Following the commissioning of a second series of How They Made Us Doubt Everything on a different subject, it was necessary to re-title all the episodes in the first series with the heading “The Tobacco Playbook”, so the two stories could be differentiated by listeners online and on BBC Sounds. This required replacing the individual episode titles with shorter alternatives to fit within the maximum number of characters that can be displayed.

For the avoidance of doubt, we continue to stand by the adjudication of the Executive Complaints Unit on the matter.

We hope this helps and we thank you for contacting us.

Complaints are sent to senior management and we’ve included your points in our overnight reports. These reports are among the most widely read sources of feedback in the BBC. This ensures that your concerns have been seen by the right people quickly, and helps to inform decisions about current and future content.

If you’d like to understand how your complaint is handled at the BBC, you might find it helpful to watch the short film on the BBC Complaints website about how the BBC responds to your feedback: https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints
It explains the BBC’s process for responding to complaints, what to do if you aren’t happy with your response and how we share the feedback we receive.

With best regards,
BBC Complaints Team
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

That’s plausible, where in the widening trend of everyone reading online content in vertically-oriented smartphone screens, a longer title would create more lines of text. But since my newly assigned complaint file allowed me to respond, I did, verbatim as follows, but with boldface added here for emphasis:

I appreciate your reply to my complaint, with the explanation that your website headings were reconfigured to fit within space limitations.

However, I stand by my original complaint, the collective BBC Radio 4 “How They Made Us Doubt Everything” Episode 6 “Reposition Global Warming as theory, not fact” was based on FALSE information provided to BBC by its guest, ex-Greenpeace operative Kert Davies. The episode asserted that both the notorious “reposition global warming” memo set and the “victory will be achieved” set were smoking gun evidence of industry-orchestrated disinformation campaigns. As I detailed at length in my original collective complaint, neither memo set was ever implemented anywhere. I even went so far as to illustrate why rejected proposals are worthless — ” suppose someone proposed that the BBC try a disinformation stunt to gauge public reaction to it; BBC rejects the stunt, but a memo of the stunt is later leaked, whereupon the American Fox News touts it as irrefutable evidence that the BBC spreads disinformation” — that claim would be every bit as false as those made by Kert Davies / BBC about the above two memo sets, and it would also be every bit as ludicrous!

The false accusations about both memo sets will ultimately be revealed to the public, it is inevitable. The facts support my complaint, Colin Tregear’s assessment was little more than ‘some kind of disinformation happened, and the plans in the memos illustrate that deception mentality.’ NO, they do not. BBC either can produce actual evidence that the energy industry deceived the public back in the 1990s or it cannot and must say so. BBC investigative reporters can corroborate what I say for themselves if they choose to do so.

I’m not holding my breath for them to reverse their decision about my original complaint; what this does is allow me to live longer rent-free in their minds about the illogic of never-implemented memos serving as ‘evidence’ that people operated in adherence to the memos. There is no way to square that up.