The Conversation‘s decision to bar climate denialists from commenting on articles is a critical step forward in the media fixing up the mess it has created over climate change.
Since the notorious Frank Luntz memo to Republican leaders in 2003 (the one that urged shifting from “global warming” to “climate change”), challenging the scientific consensus around anthropogenic climate change has been central to the fossil fuel industry’s campaigns.
It powered a hacking of journalistic practice that rewarded controversy. It aimed to widen what the Centre for Climate Change Communication calls “the consensus gap” — that difference between the proportion of scientists who accept that anthropogenic climate change is real (97%) and the proportion of the general public who do (about 67%).
Journalists need to accept significant responsibility for this gap: the yawning difference between the spread of denialist talking points by mass media and the near certainty about climate change in peer-reviewed scientific papers was noted in Al Gore’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
In the 13-odd years since, journalistic progress has been slow. Quality media like The Guardian, ABC News and the once-were Fairfax mastheads, has generally stopped treating denialism as legitimate, although they can rarely resist reporting sensationalised talking points by public figures (hello, David Littleproud and Malcolm Roberts.)
While these stories usually include rebuttal, reporting the comments carries on the attack on scientific consensus.
Commercial television networks (particularly Seven) continue to bounce around from ignoring the issue entirely to repeating — usually by interviewing figures who repeat — denialist talking points. Take a look at Pauline Hanson’s many appearances on Sunrise.
News Corp, on the other hand, has been an active promoter of the denialist campaign to undermine the scientific consensus, both through their own media and through the power of their corporate scale in Australia to shape all media. The conservative echo chamber is a powerful force for denialism, putting the consensus gap between conservative voters and scientists at about double the community average.
Closing this gap matters. Acceptance of the scientific consensus will lead to support for climate action.
Despite the power of News Corp’s conservative pundits (particularly in Australia), denialists are eager to get their views into other mainstream outlets, to use the credibility of a brand as a cover for propaganda. Triggering a debate in the comments section of a scientific and academic voice like The Conversation helps powers the denialists’ erosion of scientific consensus. Think about why Eric Abetz is getting so fired up about it all. This debate has real effects.
Last week’s climate strike is encouraging the media to think harder about its responsibilities. The Columbia Journalism Review has launched Covering Climate Now to encourage news organisations to lift their game, to “close the gap between the size of the story and the ambition of your efforts”.
At the same time that the media has slowly been getting better, fake news is making things worse. Last week, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Inside Climate News reported that troll bots were swarming Twitter, attacking climate science, scientists, and activists such as Greta Thunberg.
Climate scientist Michael Mann says this is likely driven “by bad state actors and fossil fuel interests, to create disinformation, discord and division as we approach the all-important UN Summit and children’s youth event”.
Part of fixing the mess that journalism helped create relies on direct rebuttal of denialist talking points (such as the work of Australia’s own Skeptical Science). But this doesn’t mean media have to lend their platforms — or their audiences — to the voices of denial.
I do not see how you ban it. What should not be necessary is to give equal footing for “balance” where the consensus is so overwhelming. Would you give equal status to Andrew Wakefield over a vaccination debate? What the media should be doing is defrocking the denialists by showing who pays them etc.
Stop mucking about with your journalism
I agree there’s climate change & C02 concentrations are very high
No 2 climate models agree &, although scientists agree with the overall climate direction, we’re being hijacked by so called developing countries which are trying to nobble so-called developed nations. China & India class themselves as a developing nations & wants green fund $$$. China has the 2nd largest economy & India has 5th largest economy by GDP
Please start considering #biofuels (an initiative which will reduce co2 growth now) and #carboncapture which can bring down co2 growth & which is agnostic to the way co2 gets into the atmosphere
The psychology of rectifying #climatechange by denying people their quality of life has been shown to not work so we should stop beating that dead horse.
The denialists referred to in the article have a definite playbook for disrupting conversations in public forums such as Crikey and The Conversation. This post is a good example of a synthesis of several themes from the playbook. The usual strategy is to start with a flat-out denial that climate change is occurring. This poster has at least been smart enough not to try that, which is hardly surprising given the content of the article, but has then adopted the standard strategy of falling back on other themes from the playbook, for example:
1) Climate change is fake news (‘Stop mucking about with your journalism’)
2) Climate scientists can’t be trusted and whatever they say can be discounted (‘No 2 models agree’)
3) There’s no point in Australia doing anything because our contribution is negligible (‘China has the 2nd largest economy & India has the 5th largest economy by GDP’)
4) Climate change is a scam concocted by foreign governments to gain unfair advantage over Australia or the West in general (‘… are trying to nobble so-called developed nations … & wants green fund $$$’)
5) There are ways to address climate change that will allow us to continue using fossil fuels (‘Please start considering #biofuels … and #carboncapture …’)
6) Climate change activists just want to damage our way of life (‘… denying people their quality of life’)
7) It’s all too hard so we should just give up (‘… stop beating that dead horse.’)
These red flags need to be called out whenever they are posted, so that they don’t succeed in their mission, which is to bog down conversation and ensure that no new ways forward are ever identified or agreed to. Better a dead horse than a dead planet.
Excellent dismissal of a troll/shill.
Good analysis Graeski….his post should not have got past the moderator, but your forensic dismantling more than compensates for Crikeys oversight.
Well called, Graeski (and your comments below as well). While the modern deniers are too dumb to accept the science, they’re not so dumb as to be overt (and honest) about it.
I’ve noticed a couple of new ploys in the Murdoch media recently. One was the invention of the term ‘climate centrist’ – someone who ‘accepts the science’ but doesn’t think we should get too alarmed about it (which means of course, that they don’t accept the science). The other was an article about the diagnosable levels of anxiety in children worried about the looming climate catastrophe they are facing – the remedy to allaying this anxiety was to ‘be careful how you talk about climate change in front of young children’!
Wouldn’t it be nice if the ABC joined the Conversation, and refused airtime to deniers and their propaganda mouthpieces…but imagine the howls of protest and financial retribution from the LNP if they did so.
Poor old Auntie lives in constant fear these days, why else would they give people like Anne Henderson constant runs they don’t deserve?
The ABC coverage of the Climate Strike was also quite muted in my view – fear again the motivator, to the detriment of public service.
Fairmind – agree completely. The ABC has been cowed to the point of being … um … pointless. Who can be responsible for this? The Coalition certainly, but also, one imagines, David Anderson, Ita Buttrose or both.
I also noted their muted reporting on the Climate Strike … gutless and unhelpful.
Rather than banning reporting of denialists, media should go further and report them – but only for their stupidity, and always provide the counter-truth and context (the denialist’s affiliations and history) within the story.
Roberts is a real idiot, but you have to question the mentality or learning of those that voted for him – for a yokel like him to get a second chance is a genuine travesty of the democratic process.
The problem with democracy and the democratic process, never discussed of course, is that a large number of voters have neither the analytical skills nor the interest to understand issues and candidates. These voters pick up only on the loudest scare-mongering, the crap that Howard and Morrison are so adept at pushing. We get what ‘we’ vote for, but ‘we’ as a whole are clueless.
I was at the climate strike on Friday and I would hazard a guess that not many of the (mostly) students there would ever bother with mainstream media. They are informed and engaged. Unlike ‘the adults in the room’ have moved past the deniers BS and want change now.
One sign read “we don’t have time for your bullshit” and another read “I wanted to get into politics but received an ‘A’ for science”.
Bravery doesn’t need to only sit with the young.