As fires rage out of control, News Limited papers don’t appear to think it matters, relegating coverage of the disaster to page 4 in the case of The Herald Sun and a story on page 1 of The Australian but no photo. See here for the Guardian coverage.
Australia’s inaction on mitigating greenhouse emissions is largely down to the desire of one man – Rupert Murdoch – and his drive for global political power. With almost 60% of Australia’s daily newspaper sales, he is immensely influential.
For him, governments in the US, Britain and Australia in particular, are both the enemy in impeding this power through what’s left of their media ownership rules, and obedient pawns in his political play.
Barnaby Joyce has thrown in the towel to his god in the sky as the ultimate authority on climate change but he is wrong – it’s Rupert.
Why does he do this? For one thing it’s profitable. Major political parties know he and his media are central to them winning or losing government.
Over the last decade Murdoch has called himself a climate change skeptic. He employs Terry McCrann, Miranda Devine and Andrew Bolt and others, all of whom deride climate science and say scientists and the activists who support action on mitigation are alarmist. The latest is a story in the Australian about ‘rebel marine scientist Peter Ridd’ questioning the evidence for human action damaging coral reefs.
Arguably the Australian and the Daily Telegraph; have done more to promote climate denial than anyone and their coverage of the fires, or lack of it, is yet more proof.