A Media Watch feature on the bushfire crisis. We examine how News Corp’s loudest voices denied or downplayed the role of climate change.
Media Watch: News Corp's Fire Fight
Transcript
Hello, I’m Paul Barry, welcome to Media Watch.
And welcome to Groundhog Day, where the loudest voices at News Corp are adamant that the summer’s terrifying bushfires have nothing to do with climate change.
Or, if they have, there’s nothing we can do about it.
And, as always, welcome back to News Corp’s team of hand-picked, highly-paid columnists and TV hosts on Sky, who are leading the chorus:
Passionate denial that the bushfires should make us act on climate change runs right across the Murdoch media in this country reaching an audience of millions.
But it’s also echoed by Murdoch’s Fox News in the US, as two former Prime Ministers noted last month:
So why are Murdoch’s men and women so passionate in their protests? And what would it take to change their tune? Or, as Malcolm Turnbull asked the BBC:
It is a fair question. And it’s one that’s hard to answer.
But News Corp’s deniers claim, remarkably, that science is on their side:
It’s hard to disagree. But most bushfire experts would level that charge of ignoring the facts at Peta Credlin and her fellow climate sceptics, as this group of former fire chiefs made clear in November:
The Bureau of Meteorology has also warned that climate change is making our fires worse, and made its verdict clear last month:
And three weeks ago, the Australian Academy of Science piped up with a similar conclusion:
Countless climate scientists say the same.
Whether they’re at NASA or the Royal Society.
Or at Britain’s Met Office and the CSIRO, which have just reviewed 57 scientific studies on climate change and reached the same conclusion.
But no amount of expert opinion is enough to convince the know-it-alls on Sky and 2GB and in the News Corp papers who argue tirelessly that climate change isn’t happening, or isn’t to blame, and/or this summer’s fires are nothing new:
The argument that we’ve seen it all before was laid out in The Australian on New Year’s Eve, just before the fires went nuclear on the New South Wales South Coast.
And it is that grass fires across remote Australia in 74 -75 burnt a far larger area, while 2009’s Black Saturday fires in Victoria killed far more people.
But did either really match the impact of what we’ve seen this year?
Mass evacuations, homes and businesses destroyed, 1 billion animals dead, an area 1.5 times the size of Tasmania burnt to ashes, our big cities choking with smoke and fires still raging.
It’s no wonder the Australian Academy of Science concludes -- for reasons you can read on our website:
Meanwhile, fire ecologist David Bowman told Media Watch that the scale, reach, duration and impact of this season’s inferno makes it like no other:
Once again most bushfire experts agree.
Yet once again, the News Corp choir insists it knows better:
News Corp’s ridicule of climate science is not unprecedented.
And Media Watch has ripped into its columnists and reporters many times.
But it’s been so bad this summer that insiders have condemned it too, like Rupert Murdoch’s son James and his wife Kathryn, who issued this public statement three weeks ago:
Note the word ‘denial’ coming from a Murdoch and director of News Corp. An extraordinary public rebuke.
So what was News Corp’s reaction?
Total silence. Until today, as far as we can see, the group’s Australian papers had not even mentioned it.
But Rupert’s son wasn’t the only one. A few days earlier, outgoing finance manager at The Australian, Emily Townsend, sent this damning email, in which she told News Corp chairman Michael Miller:
Townsend received huge support from colleagues for taking that stand. We’ve seen several of the messages.
But Michael Miller responded in a statement that News does not ‘deny climate change’ or its threat, and is proud of its journalists and columnists:
But the main variety News has offered has been in new angles on denial. Such as this news story in The Australian -- featuring favourite sceptic Jennifer Marohasy -- claiming the weatherman is lying to us:
Yes, seriously. The Australian is happy to suggest that the BOM is part of a huge conspiracy.
But if that was peak stupid, News Corp’s front-line columnists have offered more of the same. And with this line-up, who could be surprised?
Sky’s big stars, featured in this ad in the Telegraph, Peta Credlin, Andrew Bolt, Paul Murray, Chris Kenny, and Alan Jones spread a similar message on man-made global warming and they don’t mince their words:
All these Sky hosts also write columns for the News Corp papers where like-minded souls like Miranda Devine and Piers Akerman sing a similar tune.
Their key theme this summer has been to blame the fires on the Greens and lack of hazard reduction to reduce the fuel load.
And on Sky and 2GB Alan Jones has pushed that line too:
Greater hazard reduction must certainly be looked at but New South Wales Rural Fire Chief Shane Fitzsimmons insists it’s no panacea and has said publicly that this year’s fires have been so fierce it would have hardly held them back:
Another key argument sparked by a story in The Australian has been that arson is to blame:
That claim in early January, with the inferno at its height, was picked up by the Murdochs’ London Sun, tweeted in America by Donald Trump Jr, rehashed by the Murdochs’ Fox News star Sean Hannity on his website and promoted on Fox as the real cause of the fires:
Arson is a part of the bushfire story, of course, but the key issue is not what started the fires but why they’ve burned so fiercely.
And The Australian’s figures were wrong, because not all of those 183 arrests were for arson. Many included offences like breaching a fire ban or tossing a cigarette.
And 43 of the arrests came before the bushfire season started.
But there was plenty more online.
Like this Facebook post from PragerU, a conservative American video producer, which used the original Australian article to claim that 200 arsonists had been arrested and that arson was responsible for 50 per cent of the fires.
Those claims were wrong and the video’s now been flagged as false by Facebook.
But not before it was seen by 2 million people.
So, who is PragerU? It was set up 11 years ago by a conservative talk-show host, with funding from two Texan, evangelical, fracking billionaires. It now spends millions of dollars a year to spread conservative information, or in this case misinformation.
But the arson beat up was not just on Facebook, it was also trending on Twitter where the hashtag #arsonemergency was being spread by an army of bots, as the BBC explains:
So who is commanding this bot army?
QUT’s Professor Tim Graham, told Media Watch there was no evidence of them being run by a single controller, but their aim was clear:
So was arson actually responsible for any of the big fires?
On 9 January, Victorian Police said no:
And according to the ABC, which crunched the numbers in mid-January:
Adding:
Despite that, The Australian’s firebug beat up remains on its website with the headline virtually unchanged.
But as the political storm over the fires continues, News Corp is perhaps showing small signs of movement.
After James Murdoch’s criticism, the NT News declared on its front page:
And a few days earlier, The Australian conceded in this editorial:
And even Andrew Bolt has flirted with that idea, telling viewers last week:
Is that real change or just lip service? We’ll have to wait and see.
There’s no doubt that climate change activists across the world think the fires should be a tipping point.
And many Australians agree, with 72 per cent of respondents to an Australia Institute poll last month saying the fires should be a wake-up call to the world.
January’s IPSOS Monitor also shows a huge spike in concern over the environment, with it showing as the most important issue for the first time ever.
Add to that, last week, climate protests in Sydney by a couple of hundred so-called Quiet Australians.
And more than twice that number of people lying outside News Corp, with banners saying, News Corp lies all the time so it’s OK for us to lie here.
So, what’s News Corp’s answer to this chorus of criticism? It told us in a statement:
We don’t suggest that for a moment.
Our point is that News Corp’s star columnists, whom the group heavily promotes, all sing from the same song sheet on climate change.
And that matters. Because it stops the debate from moving on.
The Science Media Centre told Media Watch that having influential voices which do not reflect the science:
Rupert Murdoch assured shareholders last year there are no climate change deniers at News Corp.
But sadly, that is just not true.
And here in Australia its most strident voices show no sign of piping down.
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