Ofcom, the regulator for communications services in the UK, is to investigate complaints of climate change denial on TV and radio, only the second time it has done so in nearly 20 years. 

More than 1,200 complaints have been made to the regulator since 2020 alone, according to a government public attitudes tracker. The complaints against the Talk broadcasts were made by Stop Funding Heat.  

Ofcom originally rejected these complaints, but was forced into a u-turn by the Good Law Project (GLP), which wrote to it in January threatening legal action if it did not open investigations into the broadcasts.  

Pseudoscience

A public call for support by the GLP saw more than 15,000 emails sent to Ofcom. The regulator has now concluded that its approach to “due impartiality” in the broadcasts “required reconsideration”. 

According to The Guardian, one complaint concerned comments from a Talk guest who said in November that climate change “was a deliberate effort to create fake anxiety … out of something that is false”. 

Ofcom has also opened a second case about another broadcast in November, where a guest said the Labour government’s energy policies were “suicidal”, “driven by pseudoscience in many cases” and “a kind of cultish behaviour”.

The regulator is also investigating a complaint about a discussion on the issue of gender-neutral language in the court system.

Misleadingness

Separate to the correspondence from the GLP, it has opened a fourth investigation into a programme on Talk following a viewer complaint, which featured a discussion responding to news stories about energy production and consumption in the UK, and the government’s approach to policy on energy and Net Zero.

However, Ofcom stuck by its decision to not investigate three other climate complaints.

A spokesperson from the GLP said: “This sends a clear message: TalkTV can’t get away with broadcasting lies to fuel their agenda. We’ll be watching closely, to make sure that Ofcom doesn’t let TalkTV off the hook again.”

In a statement, Ofcom said: “In re-examining the programmes, we concluded that they raise potentially substantive issues under the broadcasting code which warrant investigation. We have, therefore, opened investigations [on] whether they breached our rules on due impartiality and material misleadingness.” 

A spokesperson for Talk said: “We, as we always would, will cooperate with Ofcom in these matters.”

Enforcement

Ofcom has investigated only two broadcasts on climate change in almost 20 years, once in 2007 and once in 2017, according to the GLP.

Earlier this year, Ofcom boasted about broadcasters complying with rules on the environment during an exchange with the Net Zero Committee in Parliament. 

When questioned by Labour MP Bill Esterton about the lack of action on more than 1,200 complaints about climate since 2020 alone, Laura Rhea, Ofcom’s director of standards and audience protection said that every complaint it received was fully assessed.

“The fact that there have been no investigations I think probably speak to the fact that broadcasters that we regulate have a good understanding of the code and that they are complying broadly with our rules,” she said.

A spokesperson for the GLP said: “Our view is that the reason there had been no investigations into climate misinformation for many years is not because of compliance by broadcasters, but because of failures by Ofcom to enforce its rules.” 

This Author

Catherine Early is the chief reporter for The Ecologist and a freelance environmental journalist. Find her on Bluesky @catearly.bsky.social.