Quote:
Originally Posted by Retrograde
Left-wing media is another myth. Our media is largely run by right-wing billionaires Rupert Murdoch, Gina Rinehart and Kerry Stokes.
An independent journalism study showed how the Australian media (particularly the Murdoch media) steadfastly promotes climate-science scepticism: http://theconversation.com/big-austr...-science-19727 (there is a direct link to the study in the article). |
Unfortunately, I don't think that you are quite right.
Murdoch owns a small number of newspapers, which a huge number of readers want to read - no doubt because he believes in a diversity, and his papers employ both left-wing and conservative columnists. Murdoch is also a minor shareholder Foxtel.
Fairfax owns a small number of newspapers, which used to be huge, but which now make a loss most days of the week, since they seem to cater mainly for inner urban lefties, and will not employ a conservative columnist, relying instead on guest pieces from retired conservative politicians as their contribution to balance. Fairfax also runs quite a number of talk back radio stations, some that do very well, and some slipping. Rhinehart is a shareholder in Fairfax, but they refuse to give her a board seat.
Stokes controls Channel Seven, Rhinehart is a shareholder in but does not run Channel 10, and I've lost track of who runs Channel Nine.
The Guardian is a little read on-line lefty paper owned by some one in Britain, happily replicating the failure of Fairfax by taking many of their journalists.
West Australian News isn't run by any of the above.
The most hilarious section of that piece you linked to says,
"
Readers of sceptical papers receive almost no information that would enable them to understand the complexities or likely impacts of climate change domestically or internationally. The research findings of climate scientists are largely rendered invisible for News Corp audiences. Its tabloid publications produce no critique of the sceptic position."
Why it is ridiculous and hilarious is because such readers would have been aware many of those inconvenient citations from the IPCC 5th Assessment report that I posted in my "The Sun is So Boring" thread from reading those newspapers. And they would have been aware of the facts even before the IPCC went and wrote them up in that report.
What is doubly hilarous is that those people from the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at University of Technology are unaware of is that the 5th Assessment Report is very similar to a financial newsletter - it makes predictions about what to buy, and when they turn out to be dud predictions, they can always point out to some obscure factor somewhere in previous issues which showed why the result was actually foreseeable - didn't you read it?
The same holds true for the 5th Assessment report - plenty of predictions in the headlines, but plenty of possible outs when you read the detail, so that they are always right.
When The Australian reported last year that Dr. Pachauri (Head of IPCC) had admitted there was a pause in global temperatures, it sent shockwaves around the world, but nowhere moreso than to Fairfax readers and ABC listeners. But that fact was ancient news to readers of the so called skeptical newspapers.
Regards,
Renato