Antinuclear

Media coverage of Dutton’s nuclear ‘plan’: Scrutiny, stenography or propaganda.

By Victoria Fielding | 28 January 2025,  https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/media-coverage-of-duttons-nuclear-plan-scrutiny-stenography-or-propaganda,19

Unsurprisingly, the conservative media has failed to scrutinise Peter Dutton’s nuclear plan, once again displaying bias towards the Coalition, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.

WHEN OPPOSITION LEADER Peter Dutton snuck his dodgy nuclear energy “plan” out just before Christmas, it was an important moment for Australian news media to demonstrate the quality of journalism they produce: scrutiny, stenography or propaganda.

It was also their opportunity to be honest with the public about why Dutton is backing nuclear power, an opportunity they unsurprisingly did not take.

I analysed 37 news reports published by the ABC, The Guardian, News Corp and Nine newspapers on 13 December 2024, the day Dutton released his long-awaited “plan” for nuclear power. I categorised each article as either scrutinising the plan (a useful form of journalism that critically assesses the viability of the nuclear policy), as stenography (just repeating Dutton’s plan without scrutiny), or as propaganda (news presented to look like news but what is actually a form of political advocacy, aiming to persuade readers to support Dutton’s nuclear plan).

Here are the results.

In what will not be surprising to anyone, propagandistic content made up the majority of News Corp’s 20 articles about Dutton’s nuclear plan, with 14 out of 20 enthusiastically supporting nuclear power as a viable energy solution for Australia.

One notable example of this propagandistic approach by News Corp was in The Australian’s editorial on the subject which clearly gave away the views of the masthead.

‘…the Opposition Leader has taken an important and brave step, setting out the economics of the issue in a context relevant to concerns about living costs, especially power bills… Frontier’s modelling shows that the Coalition’s plan, incorporating nuclear and renewables, would cost $331 billion across 25 years, 44 per cent less than Labor’s renewables approach.’

Just like much of News Corp’s propagandistic content advocating for right-wing policies and politicians, the implied suggestion that nuclear is cheaper than renewables is manipulatively deceiving.

According to Climate Council reports using CSIRO’s analysis:

‘…the cost of electricity generated from nuclear reactors by 2040 would be about $145-$238 per MWh, compared to $22-$53 for solar, and $45-$78 for wind. So that’s at least twice as much for nuclear, or up to ten times as much when comparing with the lowest-cost solar.’

Dutton and his News Corp collaborators never let facts get in the way of manipulating voters.

Next, we have stenography. Stenography is the laziest form of journalism. Rather than doing the difficult work of analysis and being a watchdog to ensure only credible information is relayed to voters, stenographers just repeat what a politician has said, uncritically.

This has the effect of allowing manipulative politicians like Dutton to put information in the public domain which is false and/or misleading. Stenography is actually the opposite of what of journalism is meant to be.  

Nine’s newspapers published six articles which just lazily repeated Dutton’s nonsensical nuclear plan, giving it undue credibility and failing to adequately scrutinise it.

For example, Phillip Coorey in the Australian Financial Review authored a piece originally titled ‘New costings signal war over energy’, which starts with the sentence:

‘The Coalition’s nuclear power plan will cost up to $263 billion less than Labor’s renewable rollout between now and 2050, translating into cheaper electricity over the long run, its long-awaited economic modelling purports.’

Coorey would no doubt claim that he is not responsible for any manipulative or misleading content he has included in his article, because he is just reporting what Dutton said. But that is exactly the problem with stenography. Although it is not as bad as News Corp’s overt propagandist style, it still gives Dutton a platform to mislead the newspaper’s audience.

The only useful form of journalism out of the three categories is scrutiny. Indeed, the whole point of political journalism is to scrutinise politicians and policies to ensure voters are not misled and have useful information in which to make an informed decision when voting. All four outlets included at least some articles with extensive scrutiny of Dutton’s nuclear plan. News Corp had five and Nine published three.

The ABC (four articles) and The Guardian (three) were the only two outlets to only present Dutton’s nuclear policy alongside critical analysis.

One shining example of scrutiny from The Guardian’s Graham Readfearn and Josh Butler’s explainer, titled ‘The glaring gaps and unanswered questions in the Coalition’s nuclear plan and costings’, methodically lays out the facts and problems with Dutton’s plans — including the true higher cost comparison with renewables and the huge amount of time it would take nuclear to come online.

The ABC and The Guardian’s useful critique of Dutton’s plan is exactly the information that voters need to accurately appraise whether Dutton’s nuclear policy is beneficial to them and their community. No doubt News Corp and Nine would claim that this scrutiny just shows the ABC and The Guardian are “left wing”, but it shows no such thing. The ABC and The Guardian are doing a public service in scrutinising a major policy announcement and providing factual analysis comparing the real costs of nuclear and renewable energy.

If a left-wing party announced a different energy policy, they would do exactly the same thing. It is called public interest journalism.

Unfortunately, however, this is not the end of the story. There was one major element of Dutton’s nuclear policy which was only included in one of the 37 news reports I analysed — the motive behind Dutton’s nuclear push. This was included in The Guardian’s Readfearn and Butler explainer, albeit only in two after-thought quotes at the end of the piece.

Under the sub-title ‘How have critics responded?’ The Greens’ Adam Bandt was reported to have said “the nuclear strategy relied on extending the life of fossil fuels”. The Australia Institute’s Rod Campbell similarly said the nuclear plan was a “distraction to prolong fossil fuel use and exports”.

Disappointingly, no articles overtly pointed out to the public that the whole point of Dutton’s nuclear policy was to undermine investment in renewable energy, unsettling the transition to a low carbon economy, to slow down efforts to address climate change, all in aid of fossil fuel and mining billionaires. This exclusion is not just a small part of the story of Dutton’s nuclear policy, it is the story.

This truth, unfortunately, is the story journalists collectively have failed to tell.

January 30, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media, reference | Leave a comment