The climate denialism that has peppered the coverage of the summer bushfire crisis has exposed an uncomfortable truth about what passes for opinion writing in traditional media: it’s floated free from any factual tethering.
Opinion pieces are no longer designed to make the reader smarter. They’re designed to reinforce existing views and to feed the supporting trolls and sock-puppets that make-up the biomass of social media.
News Corp has led the way as its editors seem happy to see their writers shake off any facts that might get in the way of generating the audience outrage that drives the modern mass media economy.
It’s a global trend, at least across the English-speaking world. As a result, traditional media op-eds are now rarely the shared journey of discovery between writer and reader that was once the hallmark of the best of the genre.
Now, op-eds are more a mish-mash of debating points that track a well-worn path from grievance through fabrication to diversion (as British writer Nesrine Malik examined in her 2019 book We Need New Stories).
Facts exist only to be marshalled in support of an outcome determined long before the first words are on the screen. And where real-world facts don’t fit snugly into the thread of the argument, they have to be wrenched out of context, exaggerated or, simply, made up out of whole cloth.
Take the so-called “arson emergency”, launched by reporting from the Seven network and News Corp’s mastheads before being brought in to serve the argument in Maurice Newman’s denialist op-ed in The Australian last Thursday. The conspiracy was amplified across the global right by tweet from Donald Trump Jr.
Journalists (along with police, fire fighters and experts in academia) were diverted to fact-checking, although the meme continues to twist and turn through the knotted undergrowth of denialism.
Or take another talking point in denialist circles that keeps emerging on Facebook: that global heating is a statistical error that ignores 19th century temperature records (“to fit a global warming agenda” say the more conspiratorially-minded deniers, like Queensland Liberal Senator Gerard Rennick). Although this was fact-checked as false over five years ago (by The Conversation among others), a version also turned up in the Newman op-ed as “no drying trend in 100 years of Australian data”.
Journalist members of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) are bound to “report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts”. This applies equally to op-ed writers and to news reporters. There’s real anger (including within News Corp) about the infestation of denialism, although it was a leaked email from a non-journalist employee that put the internal angst into the public arena last week.
However, opinion writers are increasingly not drawn from journalism and, where they are at News Corp, they may not be MEAA members. That leaves the editors beholden to the much weaker approach in the statement of principles of the Australian Press Council, the industry’s regulatory body.
Here, there’s a get out: “accuracy and clarity” is a must for news reports. The test for op-eds requires publishers to simply ensure that “writers’ expressions of opinion are not based on significantly inaccurate factual material or omission of key facts”.
In a weekend “cool heads needed” editorial, The Australian adopted the “no climate change deniers around here” line from the top of the company, conceding only that the company hosts “debates reflecting the political division in Australia about how to address climate change without destroying our economy”.
These “debates” are built around a stubborn resistance to fact-based discovery. Rather than News Corp’s “cool heads”, op-ed writing needs hard heads, prepared to let the facts drive the opinion where it may.
What would it take for News Corp to face the facts on the bushfire crisis and climate change? Let us know your thoughts at boss@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication.
Opinion pieces reflect how these hacks refract their reporting on other stories – through their own personal prejudices.
Ketan Joshi wrote a piece on January 2nd, later published in The Guardian, where he predicted the next excuse for denialists would be to blame arsonists.
https://ketanjoshi.co/2020/01/02/australia-is-pioneering-the-denial-of-climate-disaster/
I am only surprised by the fact that the Murdoch papers did not claim the arsonists were “greenies”, as far as I know.
Early last week, our resident climate change denialist, in the office where I work, came around breathlessly exclaiming that 200 arsonists had been charged by the police. Of course it always takes a while to dig and find a counter to such claims, but at least I had been forewarned by Ketan Joshi. I almost burst out laughing.
I did a search putting in terms like “arson” and “bushfire” and restricting it to recent hits. I cannot remember the precise terms. Almost the very first hit was a headline from The Australian along the lines of “200 arsonists arrested by the police”. Of course I could not read the article. They want me to pay for being lied to. A few entries further down was an article in Snopes.com (an american site) that completely debunked it, but lacked some of the detail that came out later.
Later in the day I repeated the search and that Australian headline had disappeared. Do the same search now and the first 3 hits are The ABC, The Guardian and The Conversation, all debunking the ridiculous rumours of last week. Although about 7 entries down, there’s The Australian, with a reworded headline, where the preview suggests they are still peddling lies and misinformation. I leave it to the sites named above to do the debunking.
It is not just playing fast and loose with the facts, it is also about the intent, which is pretend the recent bushfires are all about greenies and arsonists, and nothing to do with the climate crisis.
And this is not an op-ed article. It is presented as “news”.
This is why Media Watch needs to continue over summer. When the cat’s away, the rats will spray.
I would have asked for evidence from the resident flat-earthen. Such a question might have provided him with a new skill (of acquiring facts).
The continued line ‘we are meeting and beating our Paris targets’ is never corrected, really annoys me.
The Australians Opinion page turned into the Diatribe page in the late 90’s. Shame. Used to be an interesting read.
And still, I don’t understand, what’s in it for Murdoch to peddle this bullshit? He has kids and grandkids, how are they going to escape it all?
As destructive and stupid as the rapture mindset is, I wonder if the filthy rich think they will survive it all by wiping out much of the planet’s population leaving just the and their rich heirs. Is that it?
Who’s going to serve them their long island ice teas?
I wonder if it’s not more a case of “taking us with them” – so they won’t miss out on the future – even one they’ve screwed in their arrogant entitled malfeasance “in charge”.
[US Citizen Murdoch on the Advisory Board of (US) Genie Oil & Gas (along with Dick Cheney) – and the profits they make doing what they do? They/he can’t afford to lose sales/market share/influence.]