Media Watch host Paul Barry caused a storm on his own network this week, when he suggested that the ABC was captured by a trans lobby group. Barry pointed out that the ABC ran a slanted agenda on its trans coverage. That included ignoring significant developments, such as the closure of Britain’s Tavistock clinic, and the lawsuit run against it by de-transitioner Keira Bell. Media Watch also argued that the ABC had ignored legimitate scientific evidence about gender dysphoria and the dangers in “affirming” children’s supposed “gender identity” with chemical and surgical intervention.
If Barry thinks the ABC is biased on tranny issues, that’s nothing on their complete, one-sided blindness on climate reporting. Even seven years ago, my own quantitative analysis of ABC reporting on climate matters found that its coverage was biased by some 70% to an “alarmist” point of view. Just about 15% even bothered to cover sceptical voices (the remainder were agnostic discussions of, say, the mechanisms of a proposed carbon tax).
That was nearly a decade ago. It’s got much worse since.
The only poor excuse the ABC might have is that it’s simply following the lead of the rest of the legacy media.
Newsroom rounds have changed so much during the digital age that many reporters now only write what their audience wants to hear. The change is profound in environment journalism […]
Today environment lobby groups own the opinions of too many environment writers. It’s the same in other areas such as education, where reporters are beholden to the teacher unions, or immigration and asylum seeker news, where immigration lawyers and asylum seeker advocates dominate coverage.
Editor of the Chicago Herald and Examiner, L. E. Edwardson, famously said that, “Whatever a patron desires to get published is advertising; whatever he wants to keep out of the paper is news”. The legacy media are in the business of running free advertising for the Climate Cult.
It’s easier for a well funded advocacy group to get its message into coverage than it is for news editors to seek out difficult stories with scarce reporting resources.
That’s assuming they even want to. Because the worse truth is that the legacy media don’t even want to ask difficult questions about the Climate Cult’s alarmist claims.
Think, for example, of the early August report by the Australian Institute of Marine Science saying coral on the Great Barrier Reef had largely recovered and coral coverage was the best in the institute’s 36 years.
The Guardian had to report it with a negative message in the headline: Great Barrier Reef’s record coral cover is good news but climate threat remains. The story was full of negatives about the health of the reef. The Conversation was similarly guarded: “Record coral cover doesn’t necessarily mean the Great Barrier Reef is in good health (despite what you may have heard).” The Australian’s environment editor, Graham Lloyd, mentioned concerns about recent bleaching events but wrote his report straight without the negative slant applied by many others.
For instance, in all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the IPCC6 “Code Red for the Planet”, two hugely important stories were completely ignored.
This was the IPCC’s explicit warning that most climate models were running far too hot.
Those of us with a less alarmist bias have known this for years. Two other recent studies confirm it.
The journal Climate Dynamics in September published two studies – one by Nicola Scafetta and the other by Nic Lewis – examining equilibrium climate sensitivity that both narrow and reduce the range of warming effects of carbon dioxide on global temperatures.
Writing on Judith Curry’s Climate Etc. blog, Scafetta outlines how retrofitting actual temperature changes recorded between 1980 and 2021 showed almost all climate models were much hotter than actual records.
Scafetta found, in fact, that climate models exaggerate warming by up to 3°C.
Now you might imagine news sources as focused on climate as Guardian Australia, the ABC and The Conversation might like to report such apparently good news, that is indeed in line with what the IPCC said about climate models running too hot.
But no.
While it’s fashionable to attack the IPCC, it should be pointed out that its member do do some good science. The problem is that there is a huge disconnect between what is published in IPCC reports, in its “Summaries for policy makers”, and in what the media report. First, the good science is polluted by bureaucrats and activists “adding incorrect statements for political reasons”. These false statements are then published as hyperbolic press releases — which the media hype without question.
Yet things get even worse for accurate news judgments when environment writers start reporting about power generation and the global use of fossil fuels. As this column often observes, many journalists fail to acknowledge the need for backup and greatly expanded network infrastructure to firm unreliable power.
Or try getting anyone at the Guardian Australian or ABC to tell the truth about soaring global coal use and prices.
The Australian
Lies! All lies!
Just ask the legacy media.
After all, they know everything there is to know about lying.
