The Conversation
- Gabi Mocatta
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Justin Lane/EPA/AAP
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Author Gabi Mocatta is Research Fellow in Climate Change Communication, Climate Futures
Program, University of Tasmania, and Lecturer in Communication -
Journalism, Deakin University |
Australia’s Murdoch-owned tabloid newspapers – including The Daily Telegraph,
Herald Sun and Courier Mail – have embarked on a bold new climate change
campaign.
This climate rebrand, dubbed “
missionzero2050”, is billed by the company as “putting Australia on a path to a net zero
future”.
The change has surprised Australian media observers and, no doubt, media
consumers given News Corp’s long-held
climate denialist stance, which is well documented
in public commentary
and
research.
So why is this happening now? And what does it mean?
What does the new campaign say?
Last Monday, News Corp’s tabloid mastheads began the new campaign with a
16-page wraparound supplement and a splashy
online campaign
championing the drive to cut climate warming emissions by 2050.
News Corp must have done its climate communication research. It has assembled
a collection of stories using
best-practice climate communication
techniques: telling a global story with a local face,
visualising climate impacts
and focusing on solutions, not creating fear.
Crucially, the campaign marks a change from News Corp’s long-held position on
climate action. It’s moved from calling decarbonisation
too expensive
and bad for jobs (it tagged the cost at A$600 billion in 2015), to describing
it now as a potential $2.1 trillion economic “windfall”, offering
opportunities for 672,000 new jobs.
News Corp and climate change
What News Corp does matters, because it has extensive influence in Australia’s
media market.
The company’s newspaper, radio, pay TV and online news portfolio gives it
significant audience reach
and huge political sway. In April, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull
labelled
the Murdoch media “the most powerful political actor in Australia”.
Most people derive their understanding of climate change
from the media. So News Corp’s audience reach (which included
about 100
print and digital mastheads as of early 2021) has given it extensive influence
over Australians’ knowledge of and opinions about climate change, profoundly
shaping public debate.
Murdoch media outlets have denied the science of climate change and ridiculed
climate action for more than a decade.
A
2013 study
by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism found climate denialist
views in a third of Australian media coverage of climate change, and pointed
to News Corp outlets as the key reason for this.
News Corp’s commentators have
described
those arguing for climate action as “alarmists” and “
loons”, who are
prone
to “warming hysteria”. They have also
said
climate concern is a “cult of the elite”
and
the “effects of global warming have so far proved largely benign”.
Despite this, in 2019, Murdoch
declared
there were “no climate change deniers” in his company.
Signs of a mood shift
This pivot on climate change was not entirely unexpected.
The company had been signalling a mood shift since early 2020, in the wake of
its controversial reporting on the Black Summer bushfires, which saw it
accused of
downplaying
the fires and
fuelling misinformation
about the cause.
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James Murdoch, pictured in 2015, has become a vocal critic of News Corp’s approach to climate. Sang Tan/AP/AAP
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At that time, Rupert Murdoch’s son James expressed his concerns about the “
ongoing denial” of climate change at News Corp in the face of “obvious evidence to the
contrary”.
He subsequently resigned his position on the company’s board. Early last
month, the Nine newspapers
flagged
an imminent change of stance on climate at News Corp, noting, “Rupert
Murdoch’s global media empire has faced growing international condemnation and
pressure from advertisers over its editorial stance on climate change”.
The fine print
Despite the gloss of missionzero2050 (the newspapers
say
they are only focusing on “positive stories” about creating “a clean future
while having fun and feeling good at the same time”), a deeper analysis shows
the campaign has some quite specific agendas, signalling its climate epiphany
may be limited.
In the stories that make up the campaign, it is still rolling out
business-as-usual narratives like:
-
defending Australia’s emissions as small compared to other countries,
especially China (therefore suggesting we do not need to take drastic
action)
-
framing renewables as an unreliable source of energy (so not an adequate
replacement for fossil fuels)
-
promoting Australia’s coal as cleaner than other countries’ (some of it
may be, but the International Energy Agency says the world must
start quitting coal now
to stay within safer global warming limits)
-
promoting gas as having half the emissions of coal (burning gas does emit
less carbon dioxide, but its extraction also causes
fugitive emissions
of methane, a gas that’s about
30 times more powerful
as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over 100 years)
-
advocating carbon capture and storage (which is not yet a proven way to
reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels)
-
criticising a carbon pollution price (economists widely agree
this is the single most effective way to encourage polluters to reduce
greenhouse gas emissons).
Surprisingly, the campaign is making a big effort to
spruik nuclear power. It states: “our aversion to nuclear energy defies logic” and advocates
strongly for an Australian nuclear industry for “national security” purposes
as well as energy.
Overall, the missionzero2050 agenda seems to be set on supporting new and
existing extractive industries and Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s “
gas-led recovery”.
Strangely, the campaign also
emphasises
“putting Australia first” – although efforts to deal with climate change must
be inherently globally focused.
Loud silences
What’s most perverse, perhaps, about missionzero2050 are the things it does
not say or acknowledge. There has been no mention of News Corp’s years of
intentionally undermining decarbonisation and helping to topple Australian
leaders who advocated for climate action.
Oddly, News Corp has not muzzled its high-profile commentators. Columnist
Andrew Bolt was quick to make it known that he thought the campaign was “
rubbish”.
Nor has it aligned its advertising with the missionzero2050 message. For
example, last Wednesday, the Herald Sun ran a half-page ad placed by the
climate “sceptical”
Climate Study Group
about the “great climate change furphy,” discrediting climate science and
advocating for more coal and nuclear power.
What might it mean?
The timing of the campaign, just as Morrison
negotiates
with the Nationals ahead of the
COP26 climate conference, is likely to be no coincidence. It seems designed to provide cover for a
potential shift on the part of the Coalition towards a mid-century net zero
declaration.
Morrison is also under intense pressure from other world leaders
to lift his ambitions on climate. He’ll be expected to bring new plans for emissions cuts to the table in
Glasgow.
Some commentators have
labelled
the Murdoch pivot “greenwashing”. Others have
called
it a “desperate ploy to rehabilitate the public image of a leading climate
villain”.
However perplexing the Murdoch papers’ climate U-turn may seem, at least
Morrison will know Australia’s “most powerful political actor” is not likely
to campaign against any 2050 net zero declaration.
Given News Corp’s power to subvert the national narrative on climate, that’s
important if we want to see the action that’s so long overdue.
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