How the Murdoch media murdered Australia’s climate policy
Michael Pascoe: How Murdoch’s myrmidons murdered climate policy, The New Daily –Michael Pascoe, Contributing Editor 3 Jan 2020, “The Murdoch media, determined to remove the Labor government at any cost, mounted a savage war on the science of climate change and the structural reforms that needed to be undertaken,” wrote former Labor Treasurer Wayne Swan in a 2017 article and reprised this week on Twitter.
It’s an important insight as it suggests an answer to the mystery of the Murdoch media’s rabid climate denialism in Australia – a campaign by our biggest newspaper company that has both enabled and goaded the troglodyte end of the Coalition to make Australia a world leader in fighting carbon reduction, in worsening our changed climate.
Without the on-going Murdoch campaign promoting climate disinformation and sheer lunacy, it’s hard to imagine any government being able to persist with its cynical twisting of emissions policy, never mind outright lies.
If all major Australian media played the climate issue straight, a denialist government couldn’t survive.
But that has been the point of the Murdoch campaign – political power, not economics, not science, not even the pseudo-science it promotes.
Murdoch’s myrmidons have been exploiting climate denialism for so long, they’ve become trapped by it. Having mounted the denialist tiger to take down Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal leader and the federal Labor government, they dare not dismount.
And ride a tiger long enough – it’s 10 years since then-senator Nick Minchin and Tony Abbott used climate change scepticism to roll Malcolm Turnbull as Opposition Leader and officially weaponise climate policy – it’s unsurprising to start believing it’s the natural thing to do. It’s the nature of echo chambers to be self-reinforcing.
The tragedy of the Murdoch echo chamber is that it has come to ensnare its readership as well as its editors. Coalition members and voters are the core of that readership
Tell a lie long enough and loud enough, many people will believe it. The ABC’s Media Watch last year demonstrated the point.
When The Australian printed a surprisingly straight report of the latest consensus climate concerns, readers’ comments were strongly critical of the story, but readers’ comments after a whacky denialist rave were strongly supportive. Murdoch media have been captured by the monster they created. ……A decade of climate denialism has had its way on the Murdoch stable. Now, when the effects of changed climate scorch the land, the Murdoch papers can still delight in publishing nonsense commentary. …..
A decade of climate denialism has had its way on the Murdoch stable. Now, when the effects of changed climate scorch the land, the Murdoch papers can still delight in publishing nonsense commentary. ….. https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2020/01/02/michael-pascoe-murdoch-climate/
No comments yet.
1.This month.
The Road to War brings a sharp focus to why it is not in Australia’s best interest to be dragged into a war with China which will almost inevitably go nuclear very quickly. The filmmaker has interviewed some of Australia’s senior foreign policy analysts who have vast experience behind them in analysing what really is going on here as the United States rattles its sabres with China. And sets us up to be its proxy, like the poor Ukranians have been fed into the Meatgrinder. So America can remain the Top Dog. The Road to War reveals how the United States through its spy base at Pine Gap and by stationing six nuclear capable B52 bombers in the Top End (without permission from the traditional owners) is making Australia a prime nuclear target if the current war of words suddenly melts down into full scale war.
The Road to War shows the implicit connection between Carbon emissions (the US military uses a whopping 70% of America’s annual petroleum to move its armies and vast War Machine around the globe to its 800+ military bases..but under a loophole wangled at Kyoto, the US military does not have to report its C02 annual emissions). The Road to War starts screening at selected cities and regional centres in March. See the trailer end for details.
Antinuclear 
Leave a Reply