Steven Bartlett’s production company has responded to the BBC after an investigation by the broadcaster accused the podcast guru of sharing misinformation and harm to health.
The Diary of a CEO host welcomed podcast guests who claimed Covid was an engineered weapon and that autism can be “reversed” with diet.
The Dragon’s Den star, who has no background in health, has now been criticized by leading experts for failing to challenge these disproven claims and, as a result, creating distrust in conventional medicine.
He BBC World Service The research examined the accuracy of health information presented in 23 episodes of Bartlett’s Diary of A CEO podcast and found that 15 contained an average of 14 harmful claims that ran counter to scientific evidence.
But Flight Studio, the podcast’s producer, called the BBC’s analysis, which included verdicts from top scientists, “disappointing and false.”
It claims the podcast has published almost 400 episodes to date, meaning the BBC has reviewed less than four per cent of the episodes.
The company claimed that some of the guests featured on the podcast also appeared on the BBC.
A Flight Studio spokesperson said: “The Diary of a CEO (DOAC) is a wide-ranging, open-minded conversation with world leaders, global experts, CEOs, athletes, authors, actors and others identified by their distinguished and eminent careers and /or important life experience.
The Dragon’s Den star, who has no background in health, has been criticized by leading experts for failing to challenge disproven claims and, as a result, creating distrust in conventional medicine.
‘Each guest episode is thoroughly researched before being commissioned. DOAC offers guests freedom of expression and believes that progress, growth, and learning come from listening to a variety of voices, not just those that Steven and the DOAC team necessarily agree with.
‘The BBC claims to have reviewed 15 specific episodes of the almost 400 published to date. That any DOAC reporting focuses on less than 4 per cent of the episodes with an extremely limited proportion of guests (some of whom have appeared on the BBC) to create a broader and, in our view, biased narrative is disappointing. , misleading and frankly, false.”
Podcasts in the UK are not regulated by media regulator Ofcom, meaning Bartlett does not break any streaming rules.
An episode flagged by the BBC for featuring “discredited” views aired in July and included an interview with Dr Aseem Malhotra, a controversial doctor known for expressing his anti-Covid vaccine stance on social media.
In the podcast, Dr Malhotra described the Covid vaccine, which is credited with saving at least 1.6 million lives in Europe alone, as a “net negative for society”.
At the end of the episode, Bartlett defended his decision to air Malhotra’s outlandish views, saying his goal was to “present something from the other side” since “the truth is usually somewhere in the middle.”
Another episode that has come under fire is an October installment that included health advice from Dr. Thomas Seyfried, an American professor of biology and genetics based at Boston University.
Dr. Seyfried is an advocate of the ketogenic diet (a high-fat, low-carb eating plan) and insists it can help treat cancer.
As well as suggesting that eating this way could prevent and even treat the disease, he claimed that radiotherapy and chemotherapy only improved patients’ life expectancy by one to two months, comparing modern cancer treatments to “medieval cures.” “.
Commenting on the BBC’s findings, Professor Heidi Larson said guests were “exaggerating” scientific facts known to be true.
‘This turns people away from evidence-based medicine. They stop doing things that might have some side effects, even though they might save their lives.’