BBC Removes Laura Kuenssberg Episode After Complaint Over Chris Packham’s Comments About the Daily Sceptic

The BBC has removed the most recent episode of Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg from iPlayer following my complaint to the BBC about Chris Packham’s false and defamatory claim that the Daily Sceptic is “put together by a bunch of professionals with close affiliations to the fossil fuel industry”. It has also deleted the tweet posted by BBC Politics containing a clip in which he said this which was retweeted by Kuenssberg. The Telegraph has more.

In a statement, the BBC said: “We received complaints from people unhappy Laura didn’t challenge a comment made by panel member Chris Packham regarding the Daily Sceptic.

“During a discussion with the panel about various issues including climate change, broadcaster and conservationist Chris Packham claimed that the Daily Sceptic, whose editor-in-chief is Toby Young, is ‘basically put together by a bunch of professionals with close affiliations to the fossil fuel industry’.

“We acknowledge we would ideally have asked him to present his evidence on this, but in a fast-moving live programme it’s not always possible to pick up on every point made by our guests.

“We’ve removed any posts on X with this part of the discussion.”

The BBC has also removed the programme from iPlayer.

Packham had been discussing climate change and arguing that recent floods in Dubai, plus high temperatures in the global south and wildfires, were a result of carbon emissions.

Writing about the discussion in the Spectator, Young said: “And to think the BBC launched a multi-million-pound department last year [BBC Verify] to ‘address the growing threat of disinformation’.”

Worth reading in full.

Thank you to all those people who complained to the BBC about this outrageous slur. Let’s hope next time the ubiquitous Chris Packham falsely claims that a climate contrarian is funded by Big Oil, he’s challenged by a BBC presenter.