How Rupert Murdoch Is Influencing Australia's Bushfire Debate

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/world/australia/fires-murdoch-disinformation.html

How Rupert Murdoch Is Influencing Australia’s Bushfire Debate
Critics see a concerted effort to shift blame, protect conservative leaders and divert attention from climate change.
By Damien Cave
Jan. 8, 2020

...

His standard-bearing national newspaper, The Australian, has also repeatedly argued that this year’s fires are no worse than those of the past — not true, scientists say, noting that 12 million acres have burned so far, with 2019 alone scorching more of New South Wales than the previous 15 years combined.

And on Wednesday, Mr. Murdoch’s News Corp, the largest media company in Australia, was found to be part of another wave of misinformation. An independent study found online bots and trolls exaggerating the role of arson in the fires, at the same time that an article in The Australian making similar assertions became the most popular offering on the newspaper’s website.

It’s all part of what critics see as a relentless effort led by the powerful media outlet to do what it has also done in the United States and Britain — shift blame to the left, protect conservative leaders and divert attention from climate change.

Editors and columnists for News Corp were among the loudest defenders of Mr. Morrison after he faced blowback for vacationing in Hawaii as the worst of the fire season kicked off in December.

In late December, the Oz, as the News Corp-owned paper is known here, heavily promoted an interview with the government’s energy minister, Angus Taylor, warning that “top-down” pressure from the United Nations to address climate change would fail — followed by an opinion piece from Mr. Taylor on New Year’s Eve.

Other News Corp outlets followed a similar playbook. Melbourne’s Herald Sun, for example, pushed news of the bushfires to Page 4 on New Year’s Eve, even as they threatened to devastate towns nearby and push thick smoke into the city.


Burning bushland in Tomerong, in the Australian state of New South Wales, on Saturday.

[dhill926]

1. enemy of humanity...

fuck 'im....

[BigmanPigman]

2. When will that evil old man

ever stop? Would a stroke do the trick? He has had some heavy Karma coming his way for years and years.

[Green Line]

3. Wtf is wrong with that evil old man

[JudyM]

4. There was a great segment on Hear and Now today that dealt with this issue. Very frank.

Former Australian Coal Executive Calls For Clean Energy Amid 'Existential Threat' Of Climate Change
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/01/08/australia-fires-coal-climate-change

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

5. The day that rancid wrinkled scrotum becomes worm food, I'm throwing the

biggest fucking party since I was in college.