What Happened To Them?
So the big news this week is that Murdoch Media outlets are going to start pushing for zero emissions.
The owner of some of the nation’s most-read newspapers, including the Herald Sun, The Daily Telegraph, The Australian and 24-hour news channel Sky News Australia will from mid-October begin a company-wide campaign promoting the benefits of a carbon-neutral economy as world leaders prepare for a critical climate summit in Glasgow later this year.
Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire has faced growing international condemnation and pressure from advertisers over its editorial stance on climate change, which has long cast doubt over the science behind global warming and has since 2007 attacked various federal government efforts to reduce emissions.
The unrelenting negative publicity peaked in global outlets such as The New York Times and Financial Times during Australia’s deadly bushfires almost two years ago, which triggered a comment from Murdoch’s youngest son, James Murdoch, who publicly denounced the outlets’ “ongoing denial” of climate change. Mr Murdoch quit the News Corp board last August, citing concerns about its editorial stance.
I don't know how that is going to work in practical terms. It's a global organisation that's dedicated itself to denying the simple reality of Global Warming, applying as much pressure as it can on conservatives and progressives alike so as not to enact any policies for mitigating the effects of Global Warming. By the time they were behind Tony Abbott calling the Emissions Trading Scheme a 'tax on carbon' you knew they weren't even market rationalists. They were just deranged. It's almost as if they wanted Global Warming to have its full impact so they would never run out of headlines about natural disasters. But now they're changing their tune, they say.
As the contemporary internet meme-parlance like to spell it, "wut?"
I imagine it's a bit like the Pope pushing for birth control and priests having to toe that line or US police force unions donating money to BLM from now on and promising to pay to raise the orphans created by their police brutality or something. It's a bit like a wild fox promising not to stalk the henhouse and will now bring the chooks their daily feed - they are Fox News after all. Yeah right. I guess we're going to have to see it to believe it.
The switch in editorial position will likely attract global attention, particularly in America, where Murdoch’s media outlets, such as Fox News, have also been accused by Republican politicians of undermining global efforts on climate change. Mr Murdoch, now 90, also remains an influential figure in British politics, mainly through his newspapers, The Sun and The Times. But his eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, who is the co-executive chairman of News Corp, is more involved in the newspaper business than his father.
The article goes on to claim the shift is because of the big powwow wherein Australia is pretty much going to have its arm twisted by other OECD nations and as such it would hurt the Coalition brand if it ended up being attacked by News Corp as well as the ALP as they go headlong into the next election. Frankly, it's not like News Corp don't know on which side the bread is buttered. If they hamstring the Coalition so much that they cannot enact any policies on emissions, there might come a day when the Coalition might be un-electable (Dare I say they ought to be considered un-electable today but heck they've won the last 3 Federal elections on no climate policy so who am I to judge?).
It might sound a bit cynical even to suggest this - not that News Corp is anything but cynical themselves - but the likely tone they will take on all this is that we should mitigate our response to the climate threat. Which is to say they will likely weasel-word their way into a position that says "yes, Global Warming is here but maybe we don't have to do the hysterical maximum to combat its effect. What we need to do is the reasonable minimum so we don't harm the economy." Which would still very much be a denial stance - just one that seems to barely accomodate the reality of Global Warming. A bit like acknowledging a dancing drunk elephant in a tiny room.
Eesh. That's going to be just as spew-worthy as what they're doing today and of no help whatsoever. Let's just say unlike a leopard, a fox can't change its spots because it never had spots to begin with.
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