Mining corporations’ control of Australian media to increase, as Gina Rinehart joins
Other mining billionaires may also join Rinehart’s bid to shape Australia’s media in her own image…….. the corporate rich’s control of the media is hardly limited to Rinehart. It is the rule, not the exception….. Australia already has the most monopolised media in Western world.
Rinehart grabs for media control, Green Left, February 11, 2012 ,By Paul Benedek She’s proposed nuclear explosions for open-cut mining, funded tours by climate deniers and called for bringing in cheap migrant labour to work her mines.
Now Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, has bought the largest individual stake in Fairfax Media, which runs the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Australian Financial Review, plus various radio stations and regional papers.
In 2010, Rinehart bought herself a seat on the Channel 10 board when she paid $166 million for a 10% stake in the television station.
Her expansion from mining baron to media mogul is most likely not a financial decision. Rinehart is spending less than 1% of her wealth on Fairfax, and media is far less profitable than mining. Continue reading
Gina Rinehart and her influence on Australian media
Like him, [her father, Lang Hancock], she once advocated opening up new mines in Australia by using nuclear explosions. Hancock got the idea of using nukes to excavate harbours from Edward Teller, the fiercely anti-communist ”father of the H-bomb”
She is now putting her wealth into the climate change sceptics’ movement.
right-wing Melbourne think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, which has a long association with the mining industry. The IPA is secretive about its funding but it would be a reasonable suspicion that its rapid expansion during the past two years has been financed by Gina Rinehart.
Will readers of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald soon have to endure regular opinion pieces from climate sceptics like Monckton and Plimer, and various others still stuck in the politics of the Cold War?
Mining in a new vein, SMH Clive Hamilton, February 2, 2012 IF GINA Rinehart succeeds in getting a controlling
interest in Fairfax Media, the only competition to the Murdoch stable of newspapers in Australia, the nation’s political landscape will be changed.
Although she is famously shy of publicity, enough has emerged to make it clear that Rinehart has political views on the far right of the spectrum. Those close to her have reported that she would like to use her wealth to gain political influence.
Last year Rinehart was named by Forbes magazine Australia’s richest person. She is reported to hold more than $20 billion in assets. Citigroup estimates she is on track to become the richest person in the world.
Rinehart inherited more than father Lang Hancock’s mining company; she took on his politics, too. Hancock was described by one journalist as “a swashbuckling right-winger who believed people and governments should bow to his will”. On workers’ rights, WA secession and special deals for mining, Gina is her father’s daughter. Continue reading
Australian media: lies and distortions about a legitimate Aboriginal protest
That evening the WIN TV news repeatedly referred to “violence” and used other inflammatory terms so inaccurate as to amount to lies. The Canberra Times front page next day screamed “Australia’s day of disgrace”. There are disgraces involved, but the rowdy protest was not one.
The media, unfortunately typically, reported inaccurately and used inflammatory language, thereby promoting division.
Aussie Day ‘riot’: perspective and balance hard to find The Drum, Geoff Davies, 30 Jan 12 The bias, hysteria and divisiveness of our public political conversation is never far from view, but this week I encountered it firsthand.
I watched outside as the Aboriginal protest unfolded at The Lobby restaurant on Australia Day. The event reported in the media and reacted to by many commentators is a lurid parody of what actually happened. Perspective and balance are hard to find.
The protest was not violent. It was certainly rowdy and confronting. The protesters chanted loudly and angrily, and some beat time on the glass walls of the restaurant. There was some pushing and shoving as the VIP cars finally moved out. Police on the day said there were”scuffles” and no arrests would be made. Continue reading
Australian media distorts Aboriginals’ peaceful protest – what a load of anti-Aboriginal spin!
Gillard and Abbott were never really threatened by aboriginal protestors, Independent Australia, 26 Jan 2012 The official account portrays Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott as being attacked by violent aboriginal demonstrators today in Canberra. Present at the demonstrations was John Passant — who paints a rather different picture of events. Lunching at the appropriately named Porkbarrel Café for an awards ceremony, Gillard and Abbott became the target of a large crowd of demonstrators from the nearby Tent Embassy 40th year commemoration. Earlier that morning, 2,000 of us had gathered at the Australian National University for a welcome, some talks, rap and dancing before marching up to Parliament House and then on to the Tent Embassy at Old Parliament House….. Soon about 200 of the demonstrators moved from the Tent Embassy commemoration to the café to tell Abbott what they thought of him.
There was a bit of banging on the glass walls. The chants started as “Shame, shame!” and “Racists, racists” and then became a steady “Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.” This is a truth the one per cent and their paid mouthpieces, Gillard and Abbott, cannot acknowledge, let alone address.
The cops reacted as they always do when confronted by angry Aboriginal people. The riot squad and the Prime Minister’s protection unit brutalised the crowd to clear a path for Gillard and Abbott, ….
Then the cops tried to wreak their vengeance on the crowd – an Aboriginal crowd and their supporters – for having dared to protest against these two representatives of the mining companies that are stealing Aboriginal land. Together in a line, they walked slowly towards the protestors chanting ‘Move, move, move’ and in one case, shoved a pepper spray bottle into a demonstrators’ face….. The demonstration was a reminder that polite conversation isn’t going to shift entrenched capitalist interests and their representatives in the Parliament. It might give you fake constitutional changes but not land rights, not sovereignty, not a treaty…. http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/gillard-and-abbott-were-never-really-threatened-by-aboriginal-protestors/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=IA+Newsletter
Tent Embassy spokesman Pal Coe made a point largely lost in the media coverage today, which is that Warren Mundine and Mick Gooda don’t speak for those involved, much less for Aboriginal Australia as a whole
The Mob Violence That Wasn’t New Matilda.com, By Ben Eltham , 28 Jan, 12, The media has framed it as violent but the tent embassy protest was basically peaceful. It’s this gross distortion – and the heavy-handed response of the AFP – that warrant criticism, writes Ben Eltham
Somehow, with the strange alchemy that the media seems to summon, the dominant angle of reporting about yesterday’s Australia Day kerfuffle involving the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition has been to condemn it as a violent protest.
“Indigenous leaders condemn ‘disgraceful’ protesters” is how the ABC has beendescribing it and much of the Fairfax press has carried similar stories. The television networks have, of course, reveled in the dramatic footage. Channel 9’s news report from last night, which carried the inside-the-restaurant footage of the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader conferring on whether to evacuate, repeatedly framed the protest in emotive terms like “violent”, “raging”, “angry mob”, under siege” and so on.
Few media outlets seem to have asked whether there was in fact any violence from protesters. The available video and eyewitness evidence suggests that the violence came mainly from police and security staff. Yes, there was chanting, Yes, there was banging on the windows of local restaurant The Lobby.
But were the protesters really “violent”? Continue reading
THE AUSTRALIAN newspaper twists climate information to benefit fossil fuel industries
The Australian newspaper’s war on science, truth and journalistic ethics continues. Independent Australia, Managing editor David Donovan reports. 17 Jan 12,
In last Wednesday’s The Australian newspaper, columnist Imre Salusinszky came out with the quite extraordinary claim that the world had “beaten global warming”.
He said we should congratulate ourselves; that the worst dangers no longer loom over us……. Here’s some of what he said:………
“Last year was the sixth coldest since 1997, which shows the catastrophic scenarios of recent times are no longer looming over us.”
According to Salusinszky, because last year was only the 8th hottest in the last 14 years, and some parts of the world had below average temperatures, global warming is beat……
Because if Salusinzky had looked at the data from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) as he suggests he has, he must know that, although 2011 was “the sixth coldest since 1997” (or the 8th hottest, whichever you prefer) it was also, according to the WMO, the 10th hottest year the world has ever recorded and the hottest ever during a La Nina weather event…….
the newspaper has been conducting a calculating and concerted campaign to discredit the established and very clear consensus in global warming science and foster doubt about the need for climate action. It is the only newspaper in Australia that publishes these sorts of unscientific denialist articles — and it does publish this anti-science on a daily basis.
And while The Australian fiddles with public opinion, the world gets hotter. http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/media-2/the-australian-declares-victory-in-war-on-global-warming/
ABC Radio National again provides a platform for the nuclear lobby
Just a few months ago, in ABC Radio National’s “Ockham’s Razor” program, Robin Williams interviewed the Australia Nuclear Forum’s Terry Krieg. Yesterday, 15/1/ 12, Krieg was back on the program – this time with a more subtle approach to his pro nuclear propaganda. So , I thought it timely to draw attention to Krieg’s previous ABC performance, analysed in the article below. Perhaps it’s time that “Ockham’s Razor” gave right of return to the other point of view? – Christina Macpherson
Nuclear industry infiltrates ABC to push for an atomic Australia, Independent Australia, 10 Sep 2011, The nuclear industry is using increasingly subtle methods to promote the development of a nuclear power and radioactive waste disposal industry in Australia. Noel Wauchope reports .
“……..There was, as there always seems to be, some “astroturfing” going on. A bit of research on the Net and we soon discover that Mr Krieg is a spokesperson for the Australian Nuclear Forum. This is an organisation dedicated, it says, to “advancing peaceful aspects of nuclear science and technology”. With that aim, the ANF provides “policy papers and information papers for schools”. Its members are “professionals with wide collective experience in nuclear science and technology”. In other words, it is a false grassroots nuclear industry lobby group.
Now, I really do think that the presenter, Robin Williams, should have told us that. But perhaps he didn’t know. It is in the interests of nuclear astroturfers to not have people know that the information they present, far from being unvarnished, comes straight from the nuclear industry itself.
Secondly, Mr Krieg came out with what the nuclear lobby has been secretly planning for Australia — that is, to establish the full nuclear cycle in this country, including storing radioactive wastes……
Krieg, rather surprisingly, loses some scientific credibility right at the start, as he reveals himself as a climate-change denier. He moves on to state that pursuing renewable energy is unwise, saying that USA energy experts in the ’80s have been proved right in writing off solar energy…… Krieg dismisses any problem of radiation from Fukushima:….
He claims that nuclear power is “emission free”. Yes, emission-free if only you don’t count the nuclear fuel cycle’s “front end” uranium mining, milling, transport and its “back end”…
Krieg has spelled out what Australia’s nuclear mandarins have been quietly planning for some time, as has been reported in this journal. Not a word, not a worry, about environmental impacts, water supply and water contamination, costs of security and permanent waste disposal, risks of terrorism. It is no mere pipedream. …. http://www.independentaustralia.net/2011/media-2/nuclear-industry-infiltrates-abc-to-push-for-an-atomic-australia/
Uranium sales to India – nuclear weapons aspect ignored by media and government
Yes, but India has nuclear weapons! Australia may begin exporting uranium to India, but proponents have hijacked what is primarily an arms control debate. Aljazeera, NAJ Taylo r 29 Nov 2011 “…..The Labor Party will vote on whether to change its policy position, thereby exporting uranium to India, at its national conference held in Sydney, December 2-4, 2011. As discussed in part one, on November 15 Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard proposed an amendment to her party’s longstanding and non-negotiable position on uranium exports: that recipient states must be members of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
The immediate response in Australian news media was politically orchestrated and myopically centred on Gillard’sbelief that Australia’s economy and job seekers will benefit, and that India requires a modern policy in line with “the international community”. Few commentators appeared committed to seriously debating the uranium exports in the gritty terms of arms control ……
according to the Australia and Japan-led International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament report in 2009:
“10.5… One criticism – frequently voiced since the India agreement – is that [Nuclear Suppliers Group] members may be driven by commercial incentives to be less rigorous in their approach to countries not applying comprehensive safeguards or not party to the NPT.”
“10.7 The main substantive problem with the deal is that it removed all non-proliferation barriers to nuclear trade with India in return for very few significant non-proliferation and disarmament commitments by it. The view was taken that partial controls – with civilian facilities safeguarded – were better than none.”
Two years after these dire warnings – incidentally by an International Commission co-chaired by our former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans and instigated by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd – Gillard also appears to be primarily “driven by commercial incentives” and a perceived diplomatic dividend…..
it’s not the strength or frequency of criticism of the existing policy that is troubling to me, but the flawed arms control logic within, and moral grandstanding of, their arguments.
For if this sort of willing delusion prevails, and uranium sales to India go ahead, then undoubtedly this will be a pivotal moment when nuclear arms control returns to those tense and cold days from which, this time, we may never turn back. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011112414232543488.html
Australians can now check out coal seam gas activities on ABC’s new map
ABC’s new CSG site, ABC News 24 Nov The ABC has mapped every coal seam gas well in the country and compiled a bank of information on a new website available from today.
The site explores the cumulative impacts of coal seam gas activities in Australia, including the amount of water used to produce CSG and the consequences for salinity and greenhouse gas emissions. ABC journalist and site creator Wendy Carlisle says people can look up a well by place name or postcode. “This industry has, you know, arisen out of almost nowhere in the last decade” she said.
“There is no site you can go to which presents to you in a readily understandable way the extent of the industry as it currently stands.”(There’s) information about how much water may be extracted, how much salt could be extracted and what the greenhouse gas footprint of those activities are likely to be.” http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-24/abc-sets-up-new-website-about-coal-seam-gas-mining/3690542
Gas lobby attacks Australian Broadcasting Commission over its coal seam gas website
The ABC said it had conducted the report to counter the lack of available, readily understandable information about the industry, including its environmental impacts. The report, which features an interactive website, consolidates government and industry reports on CSG, many of which are more than 10,000 pages.
Gas lobby blows up over ABC ‘errors’, BY:ANTHONY KLAN AND AMOS AIKMAN, The Australian November 26, 2011 THE coal-seam gas lobby has attacked an ABC report into the practice as “riddled with factual errors” and lodged an official complaint with the broadcaster. Continue reading
Rupert Murdoch’s secret attack on Australia’s ABC
In hours, Murdoch could secure his stranglehold on the Australian media by acquiring our public international TV news network — and rob a struggling ABC of $223 million in funding. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is under pressure to give control over the network to Murdoch instead of the ABC — but together we can stop the deal.
we desperately need to come together again. Murdoch’s mouthpiece The Australian has been leaking details of insider support for Murdoch in a blatant attempt to force Labor into backing his bid. Conroy knows that giving the network to Murdoch would greatly increase the media mogul’s corrupting influence and hurt the ABC, and is looking for a way out.
Together, we can give Conroy the public mandate he needs to reject Murdoch’s power grab and award the contract to the ABC. Send a message to Conroy telling him that Australians don’t want this dodgy deal — click on the link below and then forward to everyone:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/murdochs_secret_abc_attack/?vl
Rupert Murdoch already owns 70 percent of Australia’s newspapers. Now he’s on the hunt for more media control, and he’s hoping we won’t notice. Through his stake in Australian News Channel, he’s been pushing hard to take over the crucial but low-key ‘Australia Network’: an Australian international public broadcaster that’s available in 44 countries. Murdoch has shown that his empire ruthlessly puts profits above all else — even hacking a murdered school girl’s phone to increase sales. With this extra network, Murdoch would vastly increase his power and take control of Australia’s public image abroad.
The move is also a key part of his strategy to destroy public broadcasting and silence independent voices. Murdoch knows that the loss of $223 million in funding would severely weaken an already stretched ABC. It would mean the loss of many ABC journalists, and potential closures of overseas news offices. If we let Murdoch win, Australia will become the first country in the world to privatise its international news service.
Insiders say Communications Minister Stephen Conroy doesn’t want this outcome. He’s looking for a way to keep the money with the ABC and stop Murdoch from further increasing his corrupting influence. If huge numbers of Australians send messages, Conroy will receive the public backing he needs to decide against Murdoch’s bid. Send your message now and forward this note to your friends and family:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/murdochs_secret_abc_attack/?vl
Earlier this year, Avaaz members in the UK forced Murdoch to drop his bid for a complete takeover of British broadcaster BSkyB, and last month we won the media inquiry here despite Murdoch’s fierce opposition. Now we have a chance to win again. With massive public support, we can rid the world of Murdoch’s corrupting influence for good. Something that would have been unthinkable even 12 months ago is now within our grasp, if we keep working together. Continue reading
Time for Australians to act on Murdoch media’s distortion of news
Murdoch media in Australia: malign but excisable, Independent Australia, 9 sept 11, Alan Austin says that the Murdoch media network is a malicious influence on Australia — that the nation has a chance of eradicating.
Rarely is a nation faced with a malicious influence which it has the chance to eradicate. Such is Australia’s luck today with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, owner of The Australian, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, Brisbane’s Courier-Mail, Melbourne’s Herald Sun and other ‘news’ outlets.
The Murdoch network in Australia has moved irretrievably away from being a legitimate news provider. It must go.
Essential to free enterprise and democracy is access to information free of distortion. Newspapers are free to say what they will in editorials and opinion pieces, of course. But news data must be untainted.
Most Murdoch publications now openly spruik for conservative politics. Not just in the opinion pieces, but news pages as well. Continue reading
Australian scientists exposing Murdoch media’s climate denial spin
Nowhere has the reliance on spin been more apparent than during the coverage of the climate “debate” by the Murdoch media and allied shock jocks…
In response to all this, and in the absence of politicians with sufficient courage to take on the hate-mongers, some Australian academics have started to provide a platform for accountability by shining a light on the media’s practices.
Using the Conversation, the world’s first daily paper written primarily by academics in co-operation with journalists, academics are beginning to catalogue the excruciating and tortuous daily distortions of climate science by various papers, especially by the Australian, Murdoch’s flagship publication.
Australia’s climate scientists expose shock-jock distortion tactics, Academics catalogue the deluge of spin and misinformation of climate science by various Murdoch-owned papers, Stephan Lewandowsky 1 September 2011, Guardian UK, Australia has unwittingly become a social experiment. A ruthless experiment on the fate of a society when a single media conglomerate, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, owns 167 newspapers and controls around 70% of the printed media market. Continue reading
How Murdoch news holds back Australia’s action on climate change
The only place that they can publish their junk science is in outlets such as The Australian, where they are welcomed with open arms…..
The Murdoch media empire has cost humanity perhaps one or two decades of time in the battle against climate change. Each lost decade greatly increases the eventual economic costs, the devastation to our ecosystems, and the suffering of future generations.
Murdoch media’s battle against climate change action | Independent Australia, 4 Sept 11, Professor Michael Ashley says the science underpinning anthropogenic climate change is rock solid and the Murdoch media empire has cost humanity one or two decades we could have used to battle it.
“………It is in this room that Chris Mitchell, editor-in-chief of The Australian, holds editorial meetings. And it is in this room that reality becomes so distorted that The Australian was able to state earlier this month, “it is in keeping with this newspaper’s rationalist pedigree that we have long accepted the peer-reviewed science on anthropogenic climate change,” while at the same time engaging in a campaign to misrepresent and distort climate science…..
The problem is that on one side of the debate you have 97% of the world’s published climate scientists and the world’s major scientific organisations, and on the other side you have fools. Continue reading
Australia’s Channel 9 TV 60 Minutes- courageous program on Fukushima
Aussie 60 Min and Kaku: Fukushima and Chernobyl Radiation In All Of Us Asian Week, BY ARTHUR HU – AUGUST 14, 2011 As usual, US media is carrying next to zero coverage of the continuing nuclear mess as now radiation is affecting rice, mushrooms, hay, beef, tea, fish, seafood, sewage, playgrounds, compost, firewood, and now they can’t even drain swimming pools that are contaminated with fallout. …Australians urged to back inquiry into Murdoch media ownership
Rupert Murdoch has been allowed to become an unchallenged dictator of public opinion…and has free rein to spread his ideological agenda promoting wars, climate deniers and xenophobia.
But now the Australian Law Review Commission has recommended the adoption of new laws guaranteeing our privacy, and more and more voices are calling for a full inquiry on our media, including ownership concentration.
Gillard: Stand up to Murdoch, Avaaz, 11 Aug 11, Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited controls 70% of what Australians read in newspapers every day — and dismal media regulation give him a free rein to hold politics hostage, manipulate public opinion, and even hack phones. But now we have an opportunity to change that…..Avaaz members in the UK won an amazing victory, helping stop Murdoch from buying over 50% of UK media. Now, he is beginning to feel the heat here — PM Gillard is considering a full inquiry into Australian media that could place News Ltd under closer scrutiny and control. But Murdoch wields massive political influence and key members of both the cabinet and the Parliament are wavering.
Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
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