Murdoch’s Massive Media Australia-on-Fire Disinformation Crusade

January 21st 2020

Rupert Murdoch (Ben Terrett)

By Bill Berkowitz

It was heartbreaking to watch the first episode of Sir David Attenborough’s new BBC/AMC/IFC series, “Seven Worlds, One Planet,” the premiere episode of which focuses on Australia and its native animals, and was filmed before the devastating bushfires. During a recent interview with the BBC, Attenborough maintained the bushfires were directly linked to climate change: “As I speak, south-east Australia is on fire. Why? Because the temperatures of the Earth are increasing,” he said. “We have been putting things off year after year. We’ve been raising targets, saying ‘oh well, if we do it in the next 20 years …’ the moment of crisis has come.”

As the bushfires rage in Australia, delivering the worst damage seen in that country in decades, climate change deniers are madly inventing arguments for why Australia is burning, and the country’s media, a good chunk of it owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., is fanning the flames of disinformation and misinformation. “News Corp Australia dominates the country’s media landscape, publishing more than 140 newspapers and employing 3,000 journalists in print, broadcast, and online,” The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Cartwright recently reported.

The fires have taken nearly 30 lives, destroyed more than 10.7m hectares of land -- including 80% of the Blue Mountains, and 50% of the Gondwana world heritage rainforests -- and perhaps as many as 1 billion animals are dead. They have resulted in the largest peacetime evacuation in the history of Australia. 

It is not only Murdoch’s Australian outlets that are pounding out climate change denialism, hosts on the U.S.’s Fox News Channel are doing its part as well. According to Salon’s Igor Derysh

 “Primetime host Laura Ingraham dismissed the ‘climate-change flameout’ as ‘celebrities in the media’ pressing ‘the narrative that wildfires in Australia are caused by climate change,’ when it has been climate scientists who have been sounding the alarm.” 

James Taylor, Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute – for decades one of the most consistent climate change denial organizations -- tossed the blame onto environmentalists. Taylor told Fox News’ Hollie McKay that “Climate change has brought bountiful rains throughout most of the past two decades, which have suppressed wildfires and allowed for more vegetation growth. That is a good thing. However, Australian government policies that discourage or prohibit prescribed burns and other proactive land management have meant that when we finally have a dry year, there is more fuel for the fires, less management of the vegetation that fuels the fires, and a greater chance of wildfires burning out of control.”

On the January 15 broadcast of WNYC’s On The Media, co-host Bob Garfield pointed out that, in addition to the bushfires, “There’s another damaging plague … spreading quickly across Australia. Conservative media outlets, many of them owned by … Murdoch have been misrepresenting the cause of the fires, and fiercely attacking those who blame the main culprit; Climate Change. …” 

There are at least three main tropes climate deniers are holding to: Nothing unusual is happening; blame the environmentalists; arsonists are causing the fires.  

Garfield talked with Damian Cave, The New York Times bureau chief in Sydney, who recently wrote a story headlined “How Rupert Murdoch Is Influencing Australia’s Bushfire Debate”. According to Cave, blaming environmentalists for fanning the flames of the catastrophe has become one of Murdoch’s media main tropes. 

Another repeated Murdoch myth is that these fires are no worse then previous ones: which is “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,” Cave reported.

Cave also pointed out that “An independent study found online bots and trolls [were] 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.”

The goal of these tropes is to “shift blame to the left, protect conservative leaders and divert attention from climate change,” Cave wrote.

“It’s really reckless and extremely harmful,” Joëlle Gergis, an award-winning climate scientist at the Australian National University, told Cave. “It’s insidious because it grows. Once you plant those seeds of doubt, it stops an important conversation from taking place.”

As Media Matters for America’s Madeline Peltz reported earlier this month, “Despite this unending devastation and scientific consensus that global warming has accelerated the crisis, News Corp.’s print and television media assets in Australia continue to spread climate denial, attack other outlets providing lifesaving coverage, and ignore local fire threats.” 

As cited by Media Matters: 

“Peter Gleeson, a commentator at Sky News Australia and a columnist at The Courier-Mail, attacked a former fire chief who connected the fires to climate change as having ‘joined a cult’ and ‘been brainwashed.’ Sky News Australia host Peta Credlin not only denied the role of climate change in the fires, but also claimed that ‘there is no doubt ... that two decades-plus of climate change activism is making them worse.’ Sky News Australia host Chris Kenny called the debate about the role of climate change in the fires ‘dumb,’ ‘reckless,’ and ‘offensive.’ The Herald-Sun’s Terry McCrann attacked the media outside of Murdoch’s grasp for their coverage of the bushfires and denied their connection to climate change. In a November 6 monologue, Sky’s Andrew Bolt, a habitual climate denier who once attacked 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg as ‘deeply disturbed’ and ‘strange,’ called the ‘big global warming scare’ a ‘con.’”

“Murdoch’s climate denial in Australia is deeply connected to conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who has also refused to acknowledge the connection between climate change and bushfires,” Media Matters pointed out. 

While a large portion of Murdoch’s Australian media outlets are twisting themselves into awkward stances in their efforts to deny climate change, there appears to be some major disagreements within the Murdoch family. As Salon reported, “James Murdoch, the son of Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, and his wife issued a statement criticizing the network, as well as his father's Australian outlets, for denying the science behind climate change when covering the fires.” Although Murdoch is no longer playing a major role in the company, he still sits on it board. 

Despite James Murdoch’s speaking up against the company’s climate change denial, nevertheless, the award for the Most Dangerous Disinformation and Misinformation Crusade goes to the Rupert Murdoch Media Empire for its tenacious and tireless climate denialism, as exemplified by its broadcast and print outlets in Australia during that country’s bushfire catastrophe.