TalkRadio bombarded listeners with false climate claims after England recorded its hottest June on record, DeSmog can report.
The channel, which attracts nearly half a million listeners a week, consistently hosted anti-climate, pro-fossil fuel voices throughout July. The Met Office said it was “virtually certain” that human influence had increased the occurrence and intensity of the extreme heat.
Analysis by campaign group Stop Funding Heat, shared with DeSmog, reveals that guests and hosts on TalkRadio spread climate misinformation 190 times over the month — an average of six times a day — with interviews and call-ins peppered with climate science denial.
Talk is owned by the billionaire businessman Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire includes the U.S. broadcaster Fox, and a string of right-leaning newspapers. Murdoch has previously described himself as a climate “sceptic not a denier”.
Talk host Alex Phillips, an ex-Member of European Parliament (MEP) for the Brexit Party and a former GB News host, told listeners on 24 July the “climate has always changed”. The 10 hottest years on record took place in the last decade.
One listener’s claim that the science “isn’t settled on climate change” was aired without pushback from the host. The overwhelming consensus among climate scientists is that climate change is happening and is caused by human activity, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels.
TalkRadio hosts and guests also repeatedly made claims on-air to undermine the government and civil service on their net zero record, without appearing to offer officials an opportunity to respond.
At least 60 separate broadcast segments — livestreamed as TalkTV on YouTube — also included attacks on the UK government’s 2050 net zero policy.
Guests and hosts on the programme regularly insulted Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, calling him a “Marxist,” “madman,” “zealot,” “crazy,” and “gormless”. Another guest said he was a “neo-Marxist” who “believes in a controlled economy”.
“Oh shut up, you lunatic,” host Kevin O’Sullivan said after a clip of Miliband speaking in Parliament played on-air.
Presenter Mike Graham hosted the largest number of segments featuring anti-climate statements. He made headlines in 2021 after telling an climate activist live on air that it was possible to “grow” concrete, an unfounded claim that he has since defended.
As a broadcaster, Talk is subject to scrutiny from Ofcom, the UK’s broadcast media regulator.
False claims made by hosts and guests regularly went unchallenged or uncorrected on air – despite requirements by Ofcom’s broadcast code that media organisations must ensure that “views and facts must not be misrepresented”, and that “alternative viewpoints must be adequately represented” on air.
Talk’s rival broadcaster GB News was a prolific spreader of climate disinformation over the 2024 general election period, according to a previous DeSmog analysis. The platform has been fined £100,000 by the regulator for breaching its due impartiality rules, while Ofcom has received thousands of complaints about the broadcaster’s coverage.
“Ofcom’s failure to deal with climate misinformation has left a vacuum, enabling channels like Talk and GB News to spread climate lies with impunity,” said Richard Wilson, founder and director of Stop Funding Heat.
Ofcom and Talk did not respond to DeSmog’s requests for comment.
Reform UK Links
TalkRadio consistently gave a platform to members of Reform UK to attack net zero. The party has pledged to scrap the UK’s net zero target if it wins the next general election.
Alex Phillips, who in 2023 was appointed as a policy advisor to Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice, was the station’s third-most prolific spreader of anti-climate claims in July. Over the course of the month, she made 19 claims that attacked the UK’s net zero target and its proponents across a number of her shows. Phillips, Talk and Tice did not respond to requests for clarification about Phillips’ role at Reform UK.
In one segment from 4 July, Phillips accused Miliband of working to “make us poorer while filling the pockets of people who have invested in renewables and own all the land” – a common anti-climate claim which maintains that the purpose of net zero is to enrich those invested in clean technology.
On 24 July, while playing down the role of human activity in climate change, Phillips falsely claimed that in the post-war period “we actually had a period of a decade or so where the temperatures radically plummeted.”
Phillips was referencing claims from the discredited and debunked 2007 documentary “Great Global Warming Swindle” from film maker Martin Durkin, which denies the existence of climate change and was formally criticised by the UK’s broadcast regulator Ofcom for failing to present climate change with due impartiality.
Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice, a former TalkTV presenter, also appeared on the broadcaster to attack net zero and the UK’s climate policies. Speaking on Jeremy Kyle’s show on 17 July, Tice said that Reform UK “would frack” in Lincolnshire.
Onshore fracking was banned in the UK in 2022 after causing seismic activity. The practice — now part of Reform UK’s official policy — has been linked to seismic activity large enough in North America to cause structural damage to buildings.
Reform UK mayor for Greater Lincolnshire, Andrea Jenkyns, has also appeared as a guest on the show. She recently said she believes climate change “doesn’t exist”.
In an interview with Mike Graham on 15 July, Jenkyns said she had met with a fracking company to ensure any potential Reform government would be “ready to start drill, baby drill”.
DeSmog has approached Reform UK for comment.
Anti-Climate Attacks
Talk hosts repeatedly sought to undermine the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change.
On 15 July, host Julia Hartley-Brewer argued that climate change was “still a theory,” played down humanity’s role in global heating, and argued that phasing out fossil fuels would cause more harm.
Even if climate change was “largely manmade,” she said, “the benefits of fossil fuels […] vastly outweigh any concerns about the weather heating up.”
On 1 July, host Kevin O’Sullivan also aired climate science denial on air, arguing that “to suggest that mankind is causing this climate change, I think it’s going too far.”
The channel also regularly hosted guests belonging to anti-climate think tanks and campaign groups.
These included Conservative peer Craig Mackinlay and his former aide, Harry Wilkinson, from the climate denial group Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). Alan Miller and Ben Pile, members of the conspiracy network the anti-net zero Together Declaration, also appeared on the channel.
Andrew Montford, director of Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the GWPF, accused the civil service of spreading “incredible disinformation in the area of net zero,” during a discussion over the government’s claims that net zero would reduce energy bills.
In the same segment, he accused the BBC of acting as net zero “propagandists, not journalists” — a statement host Mike Graham described as “exactly right”. Graham did not include any response from the broadcaster.
On another occasion, Montford attacked Miliband, labelling the UK’s net zero plans “mad”. He argued that “the only way back to cheap energy is getting rid of all the wind and solar farms”.
This argument, repeatedly aired on the channel, falsely suggests that increasing fossil fuel use would reduce UK energy costs. This is false – solar is now the cheapest form of electricity in history.
The channel also consistently platformed voices in favour of the UK increasing fossil fuel production, including a return to coal power. Coal, the dirtiest, most polluting fossil fuel, was phased out of the UK’s electricity mix in September 2024.
On a separate show hosted by former reality TV host Jeremy Kyle (2 July), former co-deputy leader of Reform UK Ben Habib, called for net zero be scrapped and for the extraction of “187 billion tons [of coal] under our feet that we could use to cut energy costs.”
On 9 July, Craig Mackinlay lashed out at net zero calling it “nonsensical,” adding that “”I want reliable energy. And to me, that means domestic gas.”
On Mike Graham’s show “Morning Glory” on 15 July, Ben Pile suggesting that renewable energy was unreliable, claiming “you need oil and gas and coal”.
Pro-fossil fuel comments weren’t just limited to guests. On 7 July, Alex Phillips said that “we need the big energy firms to be at the centre of that transition” during a discussion of BP’s sponsorship of the Science Museum in London.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the international authority on the state of climate science, is unequivocal about the need to phase out fossil fuel use as fast as possible, and avoid the opening of new fossil fuel projects.
“There is very clear evidence that many TalkRadio hosts regularly breach the Broadcasting Code by promoting inaccurate and misleading information about climate change,” said Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
“Some of the hosts are clearly not interested in the truth about climate change, and act as propagandists rather than journalists.”
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