Martin Richard Durkin (born 23 January 1962, in South Shields)[citation needed] is an English television producer and director who has been commissioned by Britain's Channel 4.
He is best known for directing The Great Global Warming Swindle (2007), which promotes climate change denial, and Brexit: The Movie (2016), which advocates for the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union.
He is a libertarian and was formerly connected to the now defunct Revolutionary Communist Party[citation needed], and a number of his documentaries have caused controversies, including those critical of state spending[1] and environmentalism.
[4] In 1997, Channel 4 broadcast Durkin's documentary series Against Nature, which attacked the environmental movement as being a threat to personal freedom and for crippling economic development.
[5][6] In its report on the series, the ITC rejected 147 complaints that mainly were concerned with fairness and misrepresentation, stating that "the programmes' line that green ideologies were, at least in some respects, open to criticism on both scientific and humanitarian grounds, was a legitimate approach".
'[11] The Great Global Warming Swindle was a 2007 documentary film promoting climate change denial that premiered on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom on March 8, 2007, and was subsequently criticised heavily by scientists.
It alleges political pressures on those who do reject anthropogenic causes of global warming, speculates on reasons for the wide adoption of this consensus and on factors leading to its original development.
The film was praised by opponents of the scientific consensus on global warming, including Andrew Bolt,[15] Dominic Lawson[16] and Steven Milloy,[17] and Durkin's work has been defended in an interview in Spiked.
"[19] Durkin later apologised for his language, saying that he had sent the e-mails when tired and had just finished making the programme, and that he was "eager to have all the science properly debated with scientists qualified in the right areas.
It upheld complaints by Sir David King that his views had been misrepresented, and Carl Wunsch, on the points that he had been misled as to its intent, and that the impression had been given that he agreed with the programme's position on climate change.
[citation needed] In 2016 Durkin made a documentary film called Brexit: The Movie, about that year's referendum on EU membership, arguing for a vote to Leave.