Environment Researcher

Package Description

Job Reference: 23276

Band: B

Salary: £24,280 - £31,500 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

Contract type:  4 Month Fixed Term Contract

Location: Birmingham

We’re happy to discuss flexible working. Please indicate your choice under the flexible working question in the application. There is no obligation to raise this at the application stage but if you wish to do so, you are welcome to. Flexible working will be part of the discussion at offer stage.

• Excellent career progression – the BBC offers great opportunities for employees to seek new challenges and work in different areas of the organisation.
• Unrivalled training and development opportunities – our in-house Academy hosts a wide range of internal and external courses and certification.
• Benefits - We offer a negotiable salary package, a flexible 35-hour working week for work-life balance and 25 days annual leave with the option to buy an extra 5 days, a defined pension scheme and discounted dental, health care, gym and much more.

If you need to discuss adjustments or access requirements for the interview process please contact the [email protected]  For any general queries, please contact: [email protected].

Job Introduction

BBC Verify is the specialist forensic journalism team within BBC News, with a wide range of investigative skills in fact-checking, data journalism, video verification, and open source intelligence (Osint).

Since our launch in May 2023, BBC Verify has been pioneering a new form of transparent journalism, showing our workings as we counter disinformation, analyse data and explain complex stories in the pursuit of truth with no agenda.

As our specialist Environment Researcher, you will bring expertise in climate science to help our correspondents and reporters break original stories and explain important issues to an audience keen to know more.

Main Responsibilities

You will be expected to make major contributions towards the creation and development of our award-winning journalism that will run on the BBC News website, as well as on TV, radio and social media.

This will include briefing reporters, correspondents and producers on interpreting climate science; at other times you will investigate claims made in public debate, assessing how credible they are using a combination of original research and your own specialist knowledge.

You will also write your own content for BBC output including our live pages, articles and broadcast output, and pitch your own ideas for original stories.

Recent examples of our work include:

UK investigating claims green fuel contains virgin palm oil:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm24n8nej94o

Could the UK actually get colder with global warming?:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn938ze4yyeo

No, Hurricane Milton was not 'engineered':

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2lyzw7xwxo

The role is based in Birmingham and we adopt a hybrid working pattern.

Are you the Right Candidate?

In your application you should clearly demonstrate the following:

• Research expertise in climate change and sustainability
• Expertise in analysing and interpreting statistics and data
• Excellent working knowledge of authoritative sources of information on climate change
• Experience of science communication to a non-expert audience
• Some experience of fact checking or identifying misinformation, including on social media

About the BBC

The BBC is committed to redeploying employees seeking suitable alternative employment within the BBC for different reasons and they will be given priority consideration ahead of other applicants. Priority consideration means for those employees seeking redeployment their application will be considered alongside anyone else at risk of redundancy, prior to any individuals being considered who are not at risk.

We don’t focus simply on what we do – we also care how we do it. Our values and the way we behave are important to us. Please make sure you’ve read about our values and behaviours here.

Diversity matters at the BBC. We have a working environment where we value and respect every individual's unique contribution, enabling all of our employees to thrive and achieve their full potential.

We want to attract the broadest range of talented people to be part of the BBC – whether that’s to contribute to our programming or our wide range of non-production roles. The more diverse our workforce, the better able we are to respond to and reflect our audiences in all their diversity.

We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We will consider flexible working requests for all roles, unless operational requirements prevent otherwise.

To find out more about Diversity and Inclusion at the BBC, please click here.

Please note: If you were to be offered this role, the BBC will conduct Employment screening checks which include Reference checks; Eligibility to work checks; and if applicable to the role, Safeguarding and Adverse media/Social media checks. Any offer made is conditional on these checks being satisfactory