HOW THE PROTESTERS MISLEAD YOU

On the VVASP 'Stop Lenchwick Windfarm' website there is a video you can play which purports to prove that windfarms are noisy. In fact, it does nothing of the sort.

The sixteen-minute video was produced by LBV Television Ltd. You could be forgiven for imagining that LBV TV is a broadcaster or television production company. But they're not. They're a corporate video production company, working for clients who include police forces, NHS trusts, local authorities and the Environment Agency. One thing they are not is journalists.

If you were paid a considerable sum of money by a client to present the client's message and point-of-view, what would you do? You'd give the clients what they want, yes? Which is what happened with the video which VVASP are so happy to show - it was produced in accordance with a particular brief, in this case to 'prove' that windfarms are noisy.

The video itself could not be broadcast on the BBC - partly because of its low production values, but mostly because it breaks the BBC's fundamental rules about balance and journalistic impartiality.

Even so, the video almost completely fails in its task of showing how noisy windfarms are.

Yes, there are various shots of a working windfarm. And yes, a vague hum can be heard whenever the camera is pointing at the turbines. The hum remains at the same volume, whether the camera is a mile or a couple of metres away from the turbines. This is because the soundtrack is a recording of the turbine taken at approximately two metres from the mast. This 'wildtrack' is played whenever a wide-angle shot of the turbines is shown. In other words, no matter how far the camera is from the turbines, the sound being played was recorded immediately beneath the rotating blades. A cheap trick, but hey, the producer's got a job to do, right?

Amazingly, even the recording of a wind turbine close up provides no more than a low hum for the soundtrack. That's how the producers could get away with a little jiggery-pokery here - because a low hum is all you get, even at the closest quarters. To pretend that that low hum can be heard a kilometre or more away, which is what LBV did through its editing, is misleading.

The presenter - who, let's not forget, is not a journalist - first interviews an elderly woman outside her Cumbrian home. She admits that she cannot see the nearby turbines from her house. Listen to the soundtrack - you can't even hear the turbines from her garden. You can hear the odd car driving past, a helicopter overhead, and the rustle of wind on the microphone (this is a pretty low-budget production), but you can't hear a wind turbine.

Nevertheless, this elderly woman wants her 'quality of life' back. Hmmnnn ...

Next, the interviewer talks to a local farmer who had no idea that a wind farm was about to be built near her sheep farm. She also has no idea who built or manages the turbines. She needs to get out more, because it's clear that she doesn't talk to her neighbours, read the local paper, or even know how to find her own toilet. She's up in arms about the windfarm, of course (wouldn't you be, if you had no idea that one was about to appear next to your property?), but her sheep don't seem to have been affected. In fairness, the sheep seem to have their fingers on the pulse more than their rather addled owner.

All in all, during a handful of local interviews with people who insist that they've had sleepless nights since the windfarm was built, at no point do you hear a turbine. You hear other background noises, but no windfarms.

Had this been a genuine piece of journalism (and not, say, a Daily Mail frightener, or a video commissioned by an anti-wind protest group), we would have heard from local residents who didn't have a problem with the turbines. Why a few people claim to be able to hear the turbines at night, when the majority of their neighbours don't, will be looked at in another posting very shortly.

But if the noise, especially at night, was so bad, would it not have been standard journalistic practice to play a recording of the turbines at night? Did nobody think to do that? What about decibel readings? Wouldn't they prove something? Wasn't that what the client wanted?

Well, a few people claim to have suffered horribly from the turbines, but nobody thought to record the noise they make (if any) at night. Not even the young man introduced as an 'engineer' (see what they're doing there? He's an engineer, so he must know what he's talking about, right? Huh - not enough of an engineer to get the scientific evidence to support his case). Nope, no one, neither the local complainers nor the producer, took the trouble to gather any scientific data whatsoever. The corporate video producers at LBV TV decided to talk to a small bunch of disaffected locals - who clearly can't hear the turbines during the day, and in some cases can't even see them - without presenting a scrap of actual evidence for the 'noise' of the turbines.

We're given opinions and grumbles - but no proof.

The producers then show us what wind turbines would look like somewhere else. Again, they use the sound trick - play the sound of a wind turbine recorded at close quarters over shots taken from a distance (check the shot where a van turns and drives right past the camera - you can hear the narrator's voice-over, and the hum of a turbine, but no sound of a van).

And then, the stroke of genius. The producers show us a maggot farm, allegedly as an example of how planning permission can be abused. Brilliant! So, having failed to demonstrate how 'noisy' windfarms are, they now try to associate wind turbines with maggot farms. Their clients must have been delighted - I mean, windfarms, maggot farms, what's the difference, really? Apart from the obvious, of course.

So, what we get from this useless video is a propaganda piece, created for a client with an interest in presenting windfarms in the worst possible light, which fails to demonstrate how noisy windfarms are. Using tricks of sound editing, it pretends that a turbine makes as much noise at 1,000 metres as it does at 2 metres, but still can't detect the sound of these turbines when it's interviewing local residents with a grievance against them. You see now why this video would not make it onto BBC television - it's a load of balls, that's why.

And VVASP wants you to think that this pile of crap was made by a television company, that it's a considered piece of journalism, and that it proves that windfarms create unacceptable levels of noise. Well, only if you switch off your brain and gawp at the screen without asking the most basic questions, like:

* who was this video made for?
* why can't they present evidence for the alleged noise?
* why have they fiddled with the soundtrack?
* why can't the turbines be heard whenever they're interviewing the locals?
* what the hell have maggot farms got to do with anything?
* why are these bastards insulting my intelligence?

Now, this sort of scaremongering bullshit is beginning to attract the attention of the Advertising Standards Authority. Click on this link to see the results of a recent ASA hearing into the lies and misleading claims being made by an anti-wind farm group:

http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/Public/TF_ADJ_45414.htm

That's the real news, here. Not that somebody made a video for a client who wanted proof that windfarms are noisy (but didn't get it), but rather that sober individuals are getting a bit sick of the way the protesters are trying to upset people through their irresponsible and ill-considered use of blatant propaganda and downright claptrap.

Yes, some people (a minority) reckon that they can hear the windfarms at night. What's going on here will be examined shortly.

But let's be clear. Nothing in the video on the VVASP website proves that windfarms are noisy. You'd be a fool if you thought that it did.