Politically biased media climate coverage is not a coincidence
Let’s be honest – the global warming debate isn’t about science by Dana Nuccitelli Friday 4 October 2013 theguardian.comThe scientific evidence on human-caused global warming is clear. Opposition stems from politics, not science.The 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states with 95 percent confidence that humans have caused most, and probably all of the rapid global warming over the past 60 years. Approximately 97 percent of climate experts and peer-reviewed climate science studies agree…….
Politically biased media climate coverage is not a coincidence
The scientific evidence is what it is, and it has no political bias. The same is not true of the media outlets that cover the topic. It’s not a coincidence that politically conservative tabloids and newspapers like the Daily Mail, Telegraph, Australian, and Wall Street Journal spend a disproportionate amount of time amplifying the voices of the less than 3 percent of climate contrarian scientists, as well as many non-scientist contrarians.
It’s certainly not the case that David Rose has some brilliant insight into the state of climate science that climate scientists don’t have. He and his fellow climate contrarians simply approach the question backwards. They start from their political ideological opposition to climate solutions and work backwards, seeking out cherry picked evidence to justify their predetermined conclusions, thus ignoring the 97 percent of inconvenient scientific evidence. This climate contrarianism ideological bias is illustrated in a new study, summarized by Graham Readfearn: Continue reading
How will Tony Abbott reward Rupert Murdoch for the election gift?
Reward and punishment: the making of media policy The Age October 2, 2013 Sally Young How will the government reward News Ltd for its wholehearted poll support? News Corp Australia (formerly News Limited) played an unusually active role during the election campaign in promoting a Tony Abbott-led Coalition government. The more cynical among us might be wondering then how long it will take for some form of quid pro quo to emerge in media policy.
……What News Corp did during the 2013 election campaign was unusual by Australian standards. We haven’t seen anything that aggressively partisan and directive since 1972 and 1975. ……hat might News Corp want from the government?
Any News Corp wish list will include ways to limit the ABC. Eighty years after the Lyons/Murdoch deals and in a new world of internet paywalls, the biggest newspaper group in the country still frets about competition from the ABC. Stopping the NBN and key recommendations from the Convergence Review can already be ticked off. But other desires may include watering down cross-media ownership rules and the anti-siphoning list that prevents Foxtel acquiring rights to televise certain sporting events, plus a crackdown on online piracy that infringes News Corp copyright.
The wish list might be larger and more ideological than mere commercial interests ………: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/reward-and-punishment-the-making-of-media-policy-20131001-2uqnz.html#ixzz2gbEFPL21
‘Pandora’s Promise’ – film that is stinking its way around Australia
The nuclear advertising film ‘ Pandora’s Promise’ will be showing around Australia, and in Edinburgh and London in the next couple of weeks. It is largely funded by people from the pro nuclear Breakthrough Institute, including people like Bill Gates, who has his own nuclear power company Terra Power. It is directed by passionate nuclear enthusiast, Robert Stone, who does Q and A afterwards, and over-talks any critical questioners.
Weaknesses of this film include the way that it:
- mocks anti nuclear opinions as a bunch extremists and zealots. It makes no effort to portray any sensible opposing opinion.
- minimises the health effects of ionising radaiation with downright untruths, for instance, telling us only that Chernobyl killed 56 people. It leaves out that a United Nations World Health Organization agency predicts 16,000 more will die from Chernobyl cancers and that the European Environment Agency estimates 34,000 more. It omits that non-fatal thyroid cancer struck another 6,000, mostly children
- does not mention the crippling economics that is now closing nuclear plants in USA (Florida, Wisconsin and California), nor the imperative for tax-payer subsidy
- does not mention insurance: the nuclear industry, alone among industries is exempt from risk through USA’s Price Anderson Act, as well as every home owner’s insurance policy stating that this policy does not compensate you for any radiation damage from a nuclear power plant.
- avoids the economics of Small Nuclear reactors (SMRs) Even under the best of circumstances, there will be no SMR prototype for as long as a decade or more. There are serious questions over the economics of mass producing these, over their safety, and the huge costs of maintaining security over thousands of little nuclear reactors scattered around the land. None of this is discussed in the film.
- promotes Integral Fast Reactors (IFRs) – fast breeder reactors. but doesn’t mention the past failure of these, in USA , France (Super Phoenix) Japan (Monju), and their enormous cost.
- Dishonestly minimises the nuclear waste problems of IFR’s. Film does not explain that the final wastes, while smaller in volume, are far more radioactive and dangerous than existing nuclear wastes, and therefore require the same amount of storage space and security.
Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper The Australian misrepresented top scientist on climate change
Top physicist accuses The Australian newspaper of misrepresenting his climate change views Graham Readfearn 24 Sept 13 IN a column this week in The Australian, writer Gary Johns tried to argue that the science of human-caused climate change was “contentious”, that climate change might not be that bad and that we shouldn’t bother to cut down on emissions.
The Australian newspaper has a record for favouring climate science denialism and contrarianism above genuine expertise.
Columns and coverage like this come along in the pages of the Rupert Murdoch-owned press with such regularity that you might think [blush] that they’ve got some kind of an agenda. Honestly, you could really think that.
In the latest column – “Let’s get realistic about reducing carbon emissions” – Johns writes approvingly of a project called the Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) while finding disparaging remarks about the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Johns doesn’t mention that the NIPCC is run by the fossil-fuel funded Heartland Institute in the United States, which advocates free market ideology within which businesses should be allowed to do pretty much whatever they like, such as using the atmosphere as a free waste dump.
But in one section of Johns’ column, he quotes and paraphrases Professor Richard Muller, a respected American physicist who was once sceptical of human-caused climate change. As reported in The Guardian and elsewhere, a couple of years ago Muller led a team based at the University of California which analysed more than 14 million temperature readings from 44,455 measuring sites from around the world going back to the mid 18th century.
Professor Muller found the world had warmed by 1.5C in the last 50 years and that burning fossil fuels and other human industrial processes were “almost entirely” the cause. Continue reading
Australia’s media economic writers bought by Rupert Murdoch
We really must talk about Murdoch’s tame economists http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/we-really-must-talk-about-murdochs-tame-economists/ 28 Aug 13 In Australia, to bludgeon his readers and viewers into believing the opposite of the truth, Murdoch has a battery of high profile economists fudging the numbers, says Alan Austin. THE WEAPONRY in Rupert Murdoch’s global arsenal includes paying corrupt police, illegal phone-tapping, fabricating malicious stories, lying to official inquiries and a range of other criminal activities.
In Australia, to bludgeon his readers and viewers into believing the opposite of the truth, Murdoch deploys other heavy artillery, including a battery of credentialled economists. Continue reading
Dick Smith got his nuclear energy costs wrong
Nuclear is the most expensive option when you take into account the external factors, followed by coal and coal seam gas. These external factors include devastating effects on health, agricultural output, land degradation, acid rain and the ability for us to feed ourselves, and of course in the case of the fossil fuels, climate change.
Already, in India and China renewables are either the cheapest form of new generation, wind is beating fossil fuels in Brazil and elsewhere. Even in Australia, wind and solar are considered the cheapest option for new capacity.
Dick Smith wrong on energy costs – renewables are cheapest http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/dick-smith-wrong-on-energy-costs-renewables-are-cheapest-34249 By Matthew Wright on 2 August 2013
I am from Energy security think-tank Zero Emissions and I wrote the Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan which is briefly showcased during the film.
The stationary energy plan, the first of its kind to show that Australia could run on 100% renewable energy a combination of wind power, rooftop solar photovoltaic, and solar thermal with storage (featured in the film), along with a huge “mining” effort to find energy efficiency in housing, commerce and industry. It was a landmark that helped caused the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), the organisation that runs Australia’s electricity supply, to write and publish this year its own plan and validate much of our work.
Whether you care about climate change or not, we’re moving rapidly away from coal because domestic and international banks, including the World Bank, will no longer invest in coal fired power. And a shift to gas would involve the burning of coal seam gas, due to a massive upswing in demand in Asia especially Japan the cost of gas here is becoming prohibitive. Continue reading
Sloppy science writing in Australia’s media
The death of science journalism in Australia Independent Australia by MatthewDonovan 24 July, 2013 As the mainstream media struggles – particularly newspapers – the loss of journalists is a worrying trend; Noel Wauchope explains why she is most concerned about the loss of qualified science journalists. INVESTIGATIVE journalists would do well to investigate what is happening to science news writing in Australia…..
I knew that quality science journalism in Australia was dwindling. It took the most recent pro-nuclear advertorial in the Fairfax media to really wake me up to this. John Watson, ‘Senior writer’ at Fairfax Media, wrote an article entitled, Want to kill fewer people? Go nuclear…..
Why have The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and others sunk to this level of sloppy journalism?
Apart from the obvious fact they don’t want to offend their corporate backers, this kind of writing is symptomatic of what happens when you get rid of your qualified dedicated science journalists. Amongst the plethora of Fairfax journalists encouraged to depart their jobs were science editor Deborah Smith, health editor Julie Robotham, health correspondent Mark Metherell and environment reporter Rossyln Beeby.
That’s Fairfax. But what about the Murdoch media? The Murdoch media never had much of a problem in its coverage of science. The Australian blithely publishes science articles written by journalists who are clearly far from expert in the field of science.
This has been documented by Tim Lambert with his article, The Australian’s War on Science. In it he goes about scrutinising, in depth, writers such as Maurice Newman and Graham Lloyd.
The Australian did have one qualified science writer, Leigh Dayton. When she was sacked, the reason given by her editors was they: Continue reading
Trans Pacific Partnership talks focus on media control
Big Media’s push for extreme new Internet censorship rules stalls secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership talks http://www.straight.com/news/402631/big-medias-push-extreme-new-internet-censorship-rules-stalls-secretive-trans-pacific-partnership-talks By David Christopher Big Media lobbyists and unelected bureaucrats are holding closed-door meetings in Malaysia this week, as they continue secret talks on the Trans-Pacific 
Partnership (TPP).
The TPP is a highly secretive and extreme trade deal being negotiated by Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Peru, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the United States, Singapore, and Vietnam.
Reports from Malaysia indicate that the TPP talks are stalled over five key issues—including a key chapter on copyright and intellectual property rights that would censor and criminalize Internet use. Continue reading
Australian Labor and Liberal against Aboriginal Land Rights being enshrined in the Constitution
As far as I can see, corporate Australia will get its way, as usual, with a pretty meaningless and toothless reference to Aborignals in the Australian Constitution
Major parties cool on ‘locking in’ land rights, ABC News 9 July 13 By Melanie Arnost The Federal Government and Opposition have both reacted coolly to a call from the Northern Land Council to have the Aboriginal Land Rights Act enshrined in the Australian constitution.
Land council chairman Wali Wunungmurra, speaking ahead of NAIDOC week’s celebrations of the Yirrkala bark petitions, said last week he wanted the act included in the constitution.
“(To) protect it from people watering it down, tearing it apart,” Mr Wunungmurra said…….The Yirrkala bark petitions were presented to Federal Parliament in 1963.
Mr Wunungmurra was one of 12 signatories to the petitions, which are credited with galvanising the land rights debate across Australia.http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-08/cool-reaction-to-calls-for-land-rights-act-to-be-put-in-constit/4805192
“Plutonium Pollyanna” – a review of film “Pandora’s Promise”
Finally (as Beyond Nuclear and other watchdog groups have noted), relying on nuclear power to mitigate CO2-driven climate change is unaffordable and impractical since it would require putting a new reactor online every two weeks……
Ultimately, Pandora’s Promise comes across as a well-executed but disingenuous exercise in special pleading. Instead of devoting 89 minutes to honestly and fully assessing the pros and cons of renewable technologies alongside the risks and benefits of new, untried nuclear power systems,Pandora’s Promise promotes a narrow agenda. As a result, the film winds up as little more than a tunnel-vision exercise in “plutonium Pollyannaism.”
Another Take on Pandora’s Promise EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL BY GAR SMITH – JUNE 28, 2013 Pro-nuclear power film obscures as much as it reveals You’ve got to give the producers of Pandora’s Promise credit for gumption. It takes a lot of chutzpah to release a pro-nuclear polemic in the wake of the triple meltdown in Fukushima, Japan. The film also suffered the ignominy of opening the same week that the owners of California’s troubled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station announced the permanent shutdown of the facility’s two crippled reactors. Even the film’s title takes a bit of nerve; it was Pandora’s Box, after all, that unleashed a host of once-contained evils into the world.
So, given the extensive history of nuclear mishaps and near-catastrophes, how do the producers of Pandora’s Promise manage to spin their counter-narrative of a “safe, green” nuclear future? Basically by: (1) at first accepting the criticisms of traditional nuclear power and then (2) arguing that the solution lies in “new, improved” nuclear reactors. Like a smart defense attorney, director Robert Stone begins by admitting all of the defendant’s worst foibles up front, thereby depriving the prosecution of an opportunity to score points by revealing these issues later…….
The filmmakers pronounce the radioactive contamination “infinitesimal” and proclaim there has been “no evidence of medical consequences.” No citations are offered to support this positive conclusion. The fact that 40 percent of Fukushima’s evacuated children have subsequently developed thyroid abnormalities goes unmentioned.
Where Are the “Anti-nuclear Environmental Leaders”? Continue reading
Australia’s news media now toes the line for big business
The real, untarnished news is getting through to a greater number of people after decades of being deliberately distorted or discarded by the power of money. Mobile phones have worked communication miracles in many countries.
The importance of Australia’s September election is beyond any in the nation’s history. The power of money has strangled good national government before. It can also deny us the full power of the NBN at the very time when we will most need its maximum capabilities.
Big money versus good government Independent Australia, Australia’s September election is more important than any in the nation’s history, writes Rodney E. Lever, as big money tries to strangle a good government. 23 June 13 “……Now newspapers are dying. Propaganda rules our lives. Good honest journalists are losing their jobs. Editorials expressing proprietorial views are on the front page.…..In the past few decades, Australia’s newspapers have gradually been taken over by ignorant multi-millionaire proprietors with other interests, and now journalists are ordered to write stories to political requirements….
… Rupert Murdoch ‒ who claims to be a journalist ‒ is a fraud. He has never written anything, except on Twitter, reads little more than balance sheets and dictates terse letters. He shows up in the working areas of his newspapers only when cameras are around.
This is why Australian politics is in turmoil. People think they are being informed by what were once called “the mirrors of the world”. They are, in fact, reading manufactured pages of falsehoods and duplicity. On top of that, we are bombarded by mentally-deficient radio shock-jocks and screwed by much of the electronic media. Continue reading
Australia’s mainstream media actively promotes climate change denialism
How Australia’s old media sows doubt about climate change Independent Australia 20 June 13, Australia’s corporate media does not properly hold politicians accountable or give the public the full picture — and is most especially remiss concerning climate change, says Brad Farrant, David Holmes and Assistant Professor Mark G Edwards. “…….
Why are they getting away with it?..….You would think most journalists would be forensically questioning any politician who denied the science or failed to devise and support adequate policies to address this threat.
Unfortunately, very few, if any, of our mainstream journalists have ever really challenged climate-science-denying politicians.
In fact, the opposite has been true. According to research by Robert Manne, many major media outlets – notably the Murdoch media, and particularly The Australian – have actively created doubt about the science. They have misreported the science and supported inaction among politicians who should be developing climate policies and offering national and international leadership on the issue. Continue reading
Australian Financial Review joins the spruikers for Australia as the world’s nuclear waste dump
Christina Macpherson 15 June 13, Today the Financial Review published a very worthy(?) article entitled “Energy sources to be a diverse mix by 2100” I should have been warned, when I saw it quoting Australian Renewable Energy Agency chairman Greg Bourne sayng that 100 per cent renewable energy power supply is not realistic.
But no – I read on this lengthy article, and then comes the real message – at the end:
AUSTRALIA COULD BE ‘THE WORLD’S REPOSITORY OF NUCLEAR WASTE’
“In any discussion of Australia’s future energy needs and mix of sources, there is always a very big elephant in the room: nuclear energy. Australia is the Saudi Arabia of uranium, with almost 1.4 million tonnes of known recoverable resources. That is 1.4 times the resources of the number two supplier, Kazakhstan, and 2.6 times the resources of number three, Canada.
But Australia does not use the metal – exporting all it produces – and has no plans to do so. “Nuclear energy is quite simply the purest, cleanest and lowest-emission form of energy there is, and Australia has enormous reserves of that form of energy,” says Professor Stephen Martin,chief executive of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA).
“If Australia is serious about mitigating the effects of climate change, then nuclear must be on the table. It has the potential to provide low-cost, clean, baseload energy and will be an important back-up if other renewable or clean energy options do not come to fruition. If we want to improve environmental outcomes, if we want to lower emissions, nuclear energy is a no-brainer,” Martin says…….
From the mini-reactors being developed, which are buried in the ground, to the ‘Generation IV’ reactors, and the potential of small-scale thorium reactors, it’s a pretty exciting outlook for nuclear energy. In fact, through technological changes, Australia could be the world’s repository of nuclear waste – which we could then refine and re-use,” Martin says.
Michael Angwin, chief executive of the Australian Uranium Association, agrees there needs to be a “reconfiguration of the Australian political dynamic” for our uranium to be used domestically for power, but says the case is compelling.
“Nuclear power is one technology that can supply electricity reliably for large population centres, with no emissions. It does this all over the world. If Australia had a nuclear industry we would be very keen to supply it,” Angwin says. http://www.afr.com/p/2100/energy_sources_to_be_diverse_mix_A2laV1flAoEMOCg5XYHneL
VIDEO: Senator Ludlam asks Minister Carr about Wikileaks and Bradley Manning
Assange no concern of ours, says Carr, The Age, 7 June 13
- The Australian government has washed its hands of Julian Assange as prosecutors at the trial of US soldier Bradley Manning have openly targeted the WikiLeaks publisher as a conspirator engaged in espionage.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr has told a Senate budget estimates committee that the government would make no more representations to the US on Assange’s circumstances because his case “doesn’t affect Australian interests”.
Senator Carr’s declaration that he would not “over-service” Assange’s consular needs came after US military prosecutors left no doubt that they regard the WikiLeaks chief not as a journalist dealing with sources but as a conspirator in the theft of classified information. Continue reading
Is the Canberra Press Gallery scared of “Independent Australia” ?
Way way down this page, an article about how the Canberra Press Gallery is a closed shop
I found this article particularly interesting, because of the reasons given by David Speers Press Gallery Committee, for shutting out Independent Australia. In brief – because IA’s journalist Callum Davidson is “not established”, and because IA is “opinion-based rather than a news site”
This raised several questions in my mind. Davidson is a freelance journalist, has an Advanced Diploma in Journalism, (and lives near Parliament House). Well, in this climate of journalists being retrenched all over the place – pretty hard to get “established” . Do we, the public, have to wait until all the old Established journalists die off, or something?
Which brings me to an even more important question. Despite IA having broken some really big stories, Speers considers that it is not a news site. It’s an opinion-based site.
As if all the Murdoch media, and even the Fairfax are NOT opinion -based. This pretense of impartiality is one of the big weaknesses of the weak Australian mainstream media.
My guess is that they are scared of Independent Australia, crikey.com, New Matilda, Inymedia, Green Left and even little websites like this one. This one is called Antinuclear – no pretense of impartiality here. And if the mainstream media had any guts, its business sites would be headed “Pro Corporations” – and particularly “Pro-Nuclear” – Christina Macpherson
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 