17/09/2021

(AU ABC Media Watch) Climate Conversion?

 ABC Media Watch

News Corp says it will explore net-zero emissions in an 'editorial series on the environment'. A change in how the media group covers climate change or just hot air?

6min17sec Broadcast Mon 13 Sep 2021

Transcript

MOLLY HUNTER: Tonight, wildfires raging across Greece and Turkey forcing thousands to flee their homes. 

- NBC News, 7 August, 2021

MAGGIE RULLI: … everyone we speak to says the same thing, they’ve just never seen anything like this.

- ABC News (USA), 10 August, 2021

CATHY NEWMAN: Part of British Columbia reached 46.6 degrees celsius yesterday and that could be beaten again by tomorrow.

- Channel 4 News, 29 June, 2021

REPORTER: It’s a natural disaster on a shocking scale …

Such freak weather events are unusual in Germany.

- DW, 23 July, 2021

Hello, I’m Paul Barry, welcome to Media Watch.

From record heat and bushfires to record rains and floods, extreme weather has hammered the world in recent months.

And as the latest IPCC report makes clear, we can expect more of it thanks to global warming.

But the good news, it seems, is that News Corp has finally seen the light and wants to save the planet:

Murdoch papers, Sky in policy shift on climate action

- The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 September, 2021

That is amazing. But can you believe it?  

After all, this is the group that helped kill the carbon tax, claims Australia’s worst-ever bushfires had little or nothing to do with climate change, plays down threats to the Great Barrier Reef and has influential commentators decrying the great global warming hoax.

Yet, as the Herald revealed last week, News Corp has supposedly decided to:

… end its long-standing editorial hostility towards carbon reduction policies and advocate for the world’s leading economies to hit net zero emissions by 2050.

- The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 September, 2021

As one Herald reader noted drily: 

Welcome, Rupert Murdoch, to the 21st century!

- The Sydney Morning Herald letters, Maree Nutt, Newport, 7 September, 2021

But is a sea change really coming?  

Drill into the detail of the Herald story and all it’s promising is “a two-week campaign”, “fronted by news.com.au columnist and former Studio 10 host, Joe Hildebrand”.

This will run in mid-October before the Glasgow climate summit. And according to the Herald will “not appear in the national masthead, The Australian”.

We can’t see Sky News pushing it either, given that in the past it’s called net-zero “insanity”, “stupid”, “ridiculous”, “rubbish”, “nonsense” and “economic suicide”.

Sky boss Paul Whittaker told the Senate last Monday they are planning a documentary on net-zero, but said: 

PAUL WHITTAKER: I wouldn’t describe it as a campaign. I would describe it, in terms of Sky News, as an exploration of what are very complex issues. 

- Senate Environment and Communications References Committee, 6 September, 2021

So what should we expect? Something like this perhaps from Rowan Dean?

ROWAN DEAN: This Sunday, we’re going to solve climate change. Just there.

ROSS CAMERON: Just here?

ROWAN DEAN: … It’s gone up by about a millimetre!

ROSS CAMERON: Rising sea levels

You got it?

ROWAN DEAN: I got it. Three mill.

- Outsiders promo, Sky News Australia, 6 August, 2017

If News Corp is about to take global warming seriously, rather than just on its younger-aiming website News.com.au, it really would be something. 

And in the US, The New York Times and Vanity Fair were excited by the news.

But plenty of people warned them not to believe it, with veteran climate scientist Michael Mann quipping: 

“Color me skeptical,” … “Until Rupert Murdoch and News Corp call off their attack dogs at Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, who continue to promote climate change disinformation on a daily basis, these are hollow promises …”

- The New York Times, 6 September, 2021

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who has accused News of doing enormous damage to the world through climate denialism, was also unconvinced:  

“... If there’s a change there, that would be significant,” ...

“I’m not going to give them credit for something they haven’t done yet.” 

- The New York Times, 6 September, 2021

And another former PM Kevin Rudd agreed with both of them, branding it greenwashing and tweeting:

It’s all politics. They want to accommodate Morrison … 

- Twitter, @MrKRudd, 8 September, 2021

Casting further doubt on the supposed change of tack, several senior figures at News Corp last week knew nothing about it.   

And then, on Friday afternoon, an email from News Corp boss Michael Miller hit the newsrooms, confirming, quote, “an editorial series on the environment and Australia’s ambitions to be carbon neutral by 2050”.

With Miller telling the troops:

I am personally supportive of a net zero target and I would like to reiterate that News Corp recognises climate change ...

- Email, Michael Miller, Executive Chairman, News Corp Australia, 10 September, 2021

Miller also said all mastheads will be involved, adding “commentators and columnists will be encouraged to participate” and their  “views will not be ‘muzzled’”.

And, yesterday, as if to prove they won’t be gagged, Sky’s Rowan Dean served up his regular Ice Age Watch on Outsiders:

ROWAN DEAN: … I've been on the planet a fair few decades now and the weather doesn’t seem all that different to when I was a little kid. Indeed it sometimes appears colder! Indeed. According to Electroverse, South Africa has had a brutally cold winter this year …

… in Japan. The iconic Mt Fuji’s first snow cap of the season has arrived a good four weeks earlier ...

- Outsiders, Sky News Australia, 12 September, 2021

So the big question is, will commentators like Rowan Dean, Chris Kenny, Peta Credlin, Alan Jones, Tim Blair, Miranda Devine, Andrew Bolt and Terry McCrann now change their tune on global warming, or continue to ridicule the call for urgent action?

As they did during Australia’s terrible bushfires in January last year:

CHRIS KENNY: … climate change exaggeration, alarmism and hysteria ...

- The Kenny Report, Sky News Australia, 22 January, 2020

PETA CREDLIN: … hysteria or worse ...

- Credlin, Sky News Australia, 20 January, 2020

ALAN JONES: … hysteria …

- Jones & Credlin, Sky News Australia, 28 January, 2020

ROWAN DEAN: … the loonies in the climate cult ...

- Outsiders, Sky News Australia, 26 January, 2020

ANDREW BOLT: Lunatic stuff.

- The Bolt Report, Sky News Australia, 27 January, 2020

We would be astonished if Herald Sun columnist and Sky News host Andrew Bolt could be turned into a climate change activist.

And his reaction to the Herald’s story last week pretty much confirms he won’t:

ANDREW BOLT: OK, so we’re going to champion a useless gesture by Australia that won’t lower the temperature but will cost jobs and money when we’re already so much in the schtuk. A pretend fix to a pretend crisis. After we campaigned against the carbon tax? OK, it’s the bosses’ paper, it’s their right to campaign, even for something stupid, even for something that makes us seem fools for once fighting against what we’re now fighting for ... 

Am I now expected to reframe my arguments that global warming is a widely exaggerated crisis?

- The Bolt Report, Sky News Australia, 6 September, 2021

Answer no, with Bolt telling his viewers — and management — that he was not for turning. 

Not now. Not in time for Glasgow. Not ever:

ANDREW BOLT: … I refuse to believe those things in the paper today, that they represent the views of News Corp. But I can’t be sure so the proof will be in the practice and in whether I stay or go. If I’m still here you know it was all untrue. If I’m gone, worry.

- The Bolt Report, Sky News Australia, 6 September, 2021

We’ll let you know if he packs his bags.

And one thing’s for sure: if News Corp is to change its tune on climate change, a lot of high-profile commentators will have to go with him.

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