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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.
After the phone-hacking scandal rocked Britain last year, News Corp officials in Australia struggled to put some daylight between its local operations and the rest of the empire, assuring the public that the country was spared phone hacking and other unethical practices. It is perhaps unlikely that wire tapping or phone hacking was practiced in Australia, simply because the local specialty of the Murdoch organs and their shock-jock allies has had a fairly low-tech reliance on outrageous 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.
The Australian government is currently seeking to introduce a rather modest tax on carbon, which will have little effect on low-to-moderate income earners, but which will nonetheless help cut emissions, thus finally getting Australia to live up to its historical responsibilities as one of the world's largest per capita carbon emitters and one of the dirtiest producers of power.
The 'debate' about the carbon tax has turned into a fact-free brawl that is sufficiently devoid of ethics to make football hooligans blush. Segments of the media, alas, do not blush.
During the recent truck 'convoy' that descended upon Parliament Hill in Canberra to protest against the carbon tax, faint memories of Allende's Chile were quickly overpowered by the raging tirade of the presiding shock-jock, Alan Jones, who whipped his crowd of truckwits into a frenzy when journalists asked whether he had been paid for his engagement. Not a silly question, given that this individual has been involved in a cash-for-comment scandal before.
This rage has been no isolated incident. At a recent talkfest by vaudevillian denialist Lord Christopher Monckton, a journalist of the ABC was jostled by the hostile crowd.
And despite the robustness of its editorial, The Australian appears remarkably thin-skinned. Its editor-in-chef threatened to sue a former reporter for defamation because she reportedly said writing about climate change at the paper was "absolutely excruciating. It was torture".
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.
This catalogue reveals much that is humorous, albeit involuntarily so.
According to The Australian's front page, a picture of an aged and bronzed Aussie swimmer on an iconic beach is evidence against the threat of sea level rises. Why? Because if 80-year-old Kevin Court hasn't noticed the sea rising, then why bother with satellite data? And because that was so much fun, let's do it again and put the 53-year-old veteran swimmer Lee Boman on the front page a few months later. Two nice blokes in trunks allay all our fears about rising sea levels and prove that climate change is a hoax. Or something like that.
A fantastic article as usual
A fantastic article as usual by Stephan. However, I would like to throw some Devil's Advocacy out for consideration. It's very common for people on *our* side of the debate to point to the scurrilous activities of these media giants and shake our heads sadly at how their spinmastery is warping the malleable minds of the great unwashed. We can rail at how they use their influence and raw financial power to crush opposition in the mass-media marketplace and ensure the government of the day allows them to continue unmolested.
In response, the conservative hacks often accuse us of being ivory-tower dwellers who don't do a very good job of hiding our disdain for the common man we allegedly champion. Our protestations are just the mating cry of the loser, looking to find solace in the company of others equally unwilling to deal with the *reality* of the situation.
My question is - are they wrong? Rather than reply with an automatic, emotive response, I'd suggest thinking long and hard about the actual evidence.
From my point of view, I'd argue they have a fair amount of validity behind their snark.
In the communication game, as it pertains to the majority of the populace, they have us beaten and the numbers show it clearly. They simply supply a better product, better in that it shows more respect and understanding for the desires of their audience.
Science communication is, in my experience, most often a situation of preaching to the converted. With a few notable examples, science comms rarely comes close to having the same appeal to the common man as the vast majority of Murdoch media material. Whether it be style, content framing or associated media, it's pitched at a *higher class* of reader.
As a science communicator, I proudly put my hand up as someone who has engaged in this repeatedly. If someone favourably compared my work to that of a news.com.au 'columnist' there would most likely be blood on the walls seconds later.
But are these hacks right? Are we contemptuous of the very people whose hearts and minds we are trying to win?
Or am I missing some compelling evidence that shows the problem is indeed with our audience and not with our willingness to engage on their 'level'?
It's clear that the self perpetuating cycle of sensationalism is the issue at hand - a cycle mastered by Mr Murdoch and those who have followed him. I understand that ideally, from a certain point of view, breaking this cycle and replacing it with a fact-based system is the desire.
However, that is very much an ideal at this point in time. The desires of the populace are currently driven by this cycle and no compelling evidence I've seen indicates it's going to reverse any time soon. In fact I'd argue that fact-free *media* is the long term historical norm that Murdoch et al have worked feverishly to return us to.
So by not engaging in this sensationalism, by standing back and hoping that common sense and scientific evidence prevails over the Kardashians and keyboard cat, are we cutting off our noses to spite our classically-sculpted faces?
Wise up people. Only
Wise up people. Only environmental extremists and liars making money from the scam are still pushing the AGW lie. No credible scientist would. The fear mongering isn't working any more. The warmists'lies have been exposed and debunked.
The Agenda 21 Conspiracy Theorists
Perplexed by the stupidity of shock jocks, I thought it worthwhile to try to understand the contempt for empirical evidence.
It turns out that a group in the US spawned the idea that Agenda 21 was a communist plot to destroy the American way of life. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, perhaps some felt the loss of a comparable adversary, and substituted the UN and environmental causes for their former foe.
A summary of the work and propaganda of these fanatics -
Vested Interests Rule OK ?
Professor Lewandowski has at his fingertips accurate scientific facts about Global Warming which would demand action from any reasonable person concerned with the future of the planet.
The necessary actions will reduce the profits of the fossil carbon based industries. They will therefore defend the status quo by any means, including flooding the media with misinformation and emotive bluster to destroy the credibility of their opponents.
In the face of such a biased media monopoly ,how do we generate a wide social concensus that we are all in the same sinking boat and that action is indeed necessary?
The defensive tactics resemble those used by the tobacco interests.
How do we package long term benefits against short term destructive profits? The imagery of plain packaging with gruesome pathology seems to work for tobacco. Any ideas on presenting the anti fossil carbon message using similar emotive and unscientific propaganda?
Perhaps the Greens are the only option?
Nonesense
Absolute nonesense. The Greens are deluded idiots living in wonderland and the only fact-free rubbish comes from Warmists and Greenie extremists like Lewandowsky!
A perfect example!
The above comment is a perfect example of climate change denialists response in a discussion.
Not a single example of where the writer feels the article is wrong. Nothing.
I was frustrated 30 odd years ago when I first started hearing about The Earths' human induced climate change and the lack of response at the time. I felt sure though that when the scientific predictions started eventuating people would naturally see the need to act.
I am now despairing because with all those predictions now coming true we are confronted not with action but a debate where scientific findings are scoffed at and wishful thinking is considered a valid position.
There seems no understanding of the scientific process and no respect for people who have devoted their lives to a particular scientific discipline. Instead armchair specialists who masquerade as journalists confuse the discussion with fact free articles. Sad, sad, sad.
re A perfect example .."i was frustrated..."
So was I,but then it was a freezing future we faced.
re. The recent climate report from more climate experts as they cont. to quote short time changes to prove their point.
What about the continuing warming trend that been ongoing over the last 18,000 to 11,000 years.
CLIMATE IS CHANGING as has happened for the last million years or so with no reason to believe that it will change any time soon, are they talking about the weather and calling it climate change?.