Antinuclear

Murdoch press ‘informs’ public opinion on climate change

negative articles about the proposed carbon emissions tax in Murdoch’s newspapers outweighed positive ones
82 percent to 18 percent.

AUDIO    How Murdoch’s Aussie Papers Cover Climate Change, NPR News by DAVID FOLKENFLIK  April 6, 2012   “…..[journalist Wendy] Bacon delved into her own harvest: the results of a case study about how the country’s newspapers handled a pressing and contentious issue.

Bacon, a professor of journalism at the University of Technology in Sydney, commissioned researchers and graduate students to examine six months’ worth of every article, feature piece, editorial and columns in 10 leading Australian papers on a proposal by the governing Labor Party to tax carbon emissions.

“What our study showed is that the majority of Australians are not getting a balanced or diverse view on a policy which was designed — at least in a small way — to tackle this problem,” Bacon said.

Seven of the 10 papers studied were part of News Corp.’s Australian newspaper arm, News Limited. The overwhelming majority of newspapers sold in the country are owned by Rupert Murdoch’s company. With such dominance of the press, the Murdoch papers draw careful scrutiny of how they cover sensitive issues.

Influence On Public Opinion

During my time in Australia, journalists said the Murdoch papers, to
varying degrees, are receptive to those who question the science
underlying projections of climate change. That holds true from the
populist tabloids to the respected, if combative, national newspaper
The Australian — even if the Oz, as it’s commonly called, has more
nuanced and extensive coverage. (News Limited’s paper in the Tasmanian
state capital of Hobart, where residents are more liberal, is seen to
take a more pro-environmental tack.)

Bacon said she wanted to see if those papers’ coverage fit or
disproved that anecdotal impression. The study found News Limited
exceeded it. Researchers were told to characterize stories as neutral
if there was any doubt about their thrust, and a sizable number were
characterized that way. Still, negative articles about the proposed
carbon emissions tax in Murdoch’s newspapers outweighed positive ones
82 percent to 18 percent.

The remaining papers were more balanced, with the two papers from
rival Fairfax Media offering slightly favorable coverage overall. But
much of the coverage was based on slight sourcing and conveyed the
sense that there was a scientific debate over climate change — not
just a political one over what, if anything, to do about it.

Bacon said that all adds up to a campaign by the Murdoch press against
the governing Labor Party’s policy rather than tough-minded scrutiny
of it. Australians, she said, simply weren’t getting enough insight
about the science or the politics to be able to make informed
decisions.

“If that’s happening on that one issue, well, it’s certainly happening
on other issues,” Bacon said. “Given that Murdoch is so dominant, we
have to at least recognize the very big influence, a big potential
influence, on public opinion wielded by one company.”

Study Denounced

The surprising thing is Murdoch himself staked out a different stance
for his own company quite publicly five years ago while citing below
average rainfall in his hometown of Melbourne and drought in his
native Australia. Speaking in New York City in spring 2007, Murdoch
pledged to make his company carbon neutral over time.

‘A Sceptical Climate’

Read Wendy Bacon’s Report

“Now, I realize we can’t take just one year in one city or even one
continent as proof that something unusual is happening. And I am no
scientist. But there are signs around the world, and I do know how to
assess a risk,” he said. “Climate change poses clear, catastrophic
threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can’t afford
the risk of inaction.”

Murdoch and his executives and journalists at News Limited declined to
be interviewed for this story. Greg Baxter, News Limited’s
then-director of corporate affairs, denounced Bacon at the release of
her study by asserting she lacked credibility and that the company
regretted that she was able to teach students.

Baxter told the news site the Conversation that The Australian
“believes that humans are warming the planet — but obviously there is
doubt among those who claim otherwise” — and that the paper favored a
market-based solution……..Negative Coverage And Skepticism

The Australian has aggressively opposed the Green Party’s agenda of
addressing climate change through greater regulation and taxation of
pollution. Two years ago, the paper vowed in an editorial that it
would seek to destroy the party at the ballot box.

At an academic conference in fall 2010, a former environmental
reporter at The Australian, Asa Wahlquist, said she fought with
editors routinely over the extent and nature of her coverage

“I couldn’t do it anymore,” she told attendees, including
environmental activists. “I hung in there for a long time because I
thought it was important that at least I was in there trying.”

The scholar and journalist Robert Manne wrote a lengthy critique of
The Australian in which he, too, devoted a section to reviewing its
climate change coverage. His conclusions echoed those of Bacon.

“On balance, the opinion pieces and the news coverage in the paper was
on the side of those who were against the climate scientists,” Manne
said. “And that might be playing into the hands of the group I call
the ‘denialists’ because all they have to do is create doubt in the
public mind to make it much more difficult for politicians to take
action.”  http://www.npr.org/2012/04/06/150142277/news-corp-coverage-a-climate-change-case-study

April 10, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Audiovisual, AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming | climate change - global warming