Media Balance in Practice (or how to successfully evade awkward questions!)

Following the Safe Waste in Shropshire public meeting on 29 February, BBC Radio Shropshire reported (rather briefly) on the meeting at around 8.12 am on 1 March and then gave John Collis, Veolia's project manager an hour's interview between 10 and 11 am during which time he took public questions.

Apart from the information that he felt happy to live downwind of the proposed incinerator (does anyone remember John Gummer feeding his kids beefburgers on TV during the BSE crisis?) he also felt free to try and discredit Dr van Steenis and other anti-incineration scientists by feeding listeners disinformation about them.

Although we feel that the presenter, Eric Smith, did a fairly robust job on John Collis who didn't give a very good account of himself, Safe Waste in Shropshire has been engaged in correspondence with BBC Radio Shropshire about their interpretation of 'balance'. Read it at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/safe_waste_shropshire/message/58

and the BBC's latest reply at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/safe_waste_shropshire/message/59

Note the repeated evasion of our request that Dr Van Steenis and the campaign be given the right of reply to John Collis' 'terminological inexactitudes' or to have the legally-required 'last word' next time Veolia has one of their Roadshows (next one is 14-15 March at the Lantern Centre, Sundorne) if the BBC mentions it in any of their media.