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The Telegraph reports:
BBC journalists are being sent on courses to stop them inviting so many cranks onto programmes to air 'marginal views'.
The BBC Trust on Thursday published a progress report into the corporation's science coverage which was criticised in 2012 for giving too much air-time to critics who oppose non-contentious issues.
The report found that there was still an 'over-rigid application of editorial guidelines on impartiality' which sought to give the 'other side' of the argument, even if that viewpoint was widely dismissed.
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BBC to Stop Inviting Guests with Marginal Views to Discuss Non-Contentious Scientific Issues
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(Score: 2) by khakipuce on Monday July 07 2014, @12:06PM
Several years ago the BBC commissioned a report by prof. Steve Jones on this subject and he gave a nice example of the issue. Suppose mathematicians discover that 2+2=4, the journos would get on someone from the number 5 preservation society to argue that 2+2=5 and at the end of the debate the journo would conclude that the answer is somewhere between 4 and 5.
Some things are facts, the BBC (or the government if you are that paranoid) is not going to stop reporting things that are contentious but it is going to separate facts from debatable analysis. It is also going to dig deeper in to what motivates people to argue for a particular case, which may well be nothing to do with science. In fact we sometimes see scientists debating with government representatives.