BBC Takes Six Months To Not Really Criticize Its WiFi Scaremongering Report

from the that's-the-best-you-can-do? dept

You may recall that back in May the BBC's "Panorama" TV show was accused of running a scaremongering TV program about the supposed "dangers" of WiFi on children. There were numerous problems with the program, from bad science to bad reporting. You would think that the BBC might take those sorts of accusations seriously. Apparently, it was enough for the BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit to take a look at the issue. It took the ECU six months, but its report is out and it admits that Panorama made some mistakes, but really only cops to one particular mistake: that it presented the one dissenter on the program in a very biased light. It doesn't seem to say anything about the fact that a major source for the program happens to sell equipment designed to test how much "radiation" there is as well as products of questionable scientific value to "protect" you from such radiation (radiation protecting beekeeper hat anyone?). The whole thing was such a joke that even the kids in the school where some of the program was filmed pointed out how unscientific the experiment was. Unfortunately, the BBC doesn't seem to address any of that in its review of the program at all. Perhaps we'll need to wait another six months.

Filed Under: bad science, dangers, scaremongering, wifi
Companies: bbc