There are few things more exhilarating in Australia’s continued democratic story than to see the nation’s media stand up to defend that critical, democratic right to freedom of the press. And there are few things more dispiriting than to see that same media coming out just as enthusiastically to deny the rights of others.
Freedom of the press? Hell yeah! Freedom of assembly? Well hang on just a moment.
We crossed some sort of line this month in the media’s picking and choosing of rights, with The West Australian embracing the rhetoric of the British right’s media of choice, the Daily Mail, to attack the protests of the Disrupt Burrup Hub movement as the work of “eco-fanatics”.
Across traditional media, reporters have more or less uncritically picked up the words of Woodside Energy in characterising the protesters as “extremists” and downplayed the movement’s insistence that its campaign is “peaceful”.
Meanwhile, the US-owned and controlled fossil fuel fanzine locally branded as The Australian is weaponising the rhetoric to implicate its own enemy of choice, the ABC, for covering the protest at the home of Woodside Energy boss Meg O’Neill.
Woodside is leading the Burrup Hub mega-project to develop two offshore gas fields for export in northern Western Australia which, according to the state’s Conservation Council, “would be the most polluting project ever to be developed in Australia, delivering some of the world’s dirtiest LNG for up to 50 years”.
Campaigners against global heating (you know, those save-the-planet types) are trying to turn it into WA’s own Save the Franklin, a moment that would force the state to pivot its future from its reliance on the development of fossil fuels for export.
The media’s dismissal of the rights of the protesters comes mixed with cheerleading for a crackdown, with calls for tougher penalties for those who — *gasp* — disrupt traffic. So far, governments have been happy, even eager, to go along with it.
There’s been a touch of both sides handwringing with The Australian Financial Review editorialising last week: “All reporters have to tread a fine line when it comes to covering the activity of environmental activists, some of whom have been escalating the nature of their protests. The O’Neill incident appears to be a galvanising moment for the media to reflect on where the line is when covering attention-grabbing stunts by those who have become radicalised by climate change.”
Well, tut-tut-tut. This from a commercial media that has built its business model around dutifully tracking along day after day behind politicians rolling out “attention-grabbing” stunt after stunt.
The failure to properly report, or even understand, the rising generational revolt against the fossil fuel death cult that lies at the core of our quarry culture comes from the media’s biggest of blind spots: sometimes (most of the time, really) politics is not all about them.
Media’s self-centred syllogism (if we hear the protest, it must be meant for our ears) drives its core misreading of the politics of protest. The tactics of the Disrupt Burrup Hub movement are incomprehensible to traditional media’s pollie-centric top-down understanding of change.
But from the perspective of bottom-up organising, it’s clear. It’s the lessons of activism summed up in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Why Woodside and Burrup? Alinsky says: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalise it, and polarise it.”
And why these seemingly unpopular disruptions that have so exercised radio shock jocks and pushed governments into protest crackdowns? It’s Alinsky’s tactical advice to keep up pressure by pushing a negative hard enough until it breaks through to become a positive (which, he notes, is generally the case with passive disobedience.)
The movement has also, per Alinsky, used that potent weapon of ridicule that provokes an overreaction by releasing a smoke bomb in Woodside Perth’s headquarters.
It’s all about raising the costs — moral and financial — of corporate and government actions (or in the case of global warming, inaction) while breaking through to a moment of change.
Unlike politicians, organisers for change rarely see the news media as the key tool for amplifying their message. That’s particularly true in today’s social media age, when the audience for change is more likely getting their news directly by watching TikTok videos from the protesters themselves than mediated through lectures in The West Australian or The Australian.
By confronting the corporate media’s traditional disruption-as-deviance framing with its puffed-up commitment to freedom of expression, the movement for climate is playing yet another of Alinsky’s rules against the media itself: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
Do you back the Woodside protesters? How should the media be covering the climate crisis? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
I demonstrate against Woodsides Burrup Hub. The scene is very similar to No Dams Tasmania 1982. Its close to evenly divided but every climate disaster means a few more support us. Theres no longer social license for increasing and entrenching gas exports. And the No New Gas and Coal movement will gain more and more traction until like 1982 a Fed major party willbe forced to make it policy. We wont give up because global warming is not going away.
Onya Ben. You and your fellow Dangerous Radicals Threatening the Australian Way of Life are bloody champions, in an actual sense, unlike the confectionary one so often applied to sporting “heroes”. Keep up the great work!
I hope you are correct Ben as the continued damage by fossil fuels is 10,000 times more significant than, by comparison, the small amount of damage the Franklin dam may have caused.
It’s interesting how quickly the news media shifted to labelling these people as extemists and fanatics for what was some minor civil disobedience. It’s hyperbole at it’s finest which actually doesn’t give them anywhere to go from a reporting point of view and it’ll inoculate their potential audiences to these protesters actions. What will the media do if these organisations rapidly escalate?
‘…a commercial media that has built its business model around…’ Umm. Phone hacking. Stalking celebrities. Demonising minorities. Empowering the Hard Right. But let off a stink bomb at Woodside, and you’re the Antichrist.
I’m with the climate activists. People have asked nicely that the mining of fossil fuels be wound down and the Government takes no notice. Tassie dams, activist court cases in Victoria to stop loggers breaching their own guidelines. Direct action seems to be the only way way to get change.
Lets be clear the newspapers and their proprietors know full well that fossil fuels are destroying the planet. They have the same, or better, information as everyone else. They choose to support fossil fuel interests, who themselves know the damage they are doing, for the money. Pure and simple. They dont have to prove the environmentalists wrong. They just have to muddy the waters a bit so that the useful idiots who listen to the various shock jocks can get themselves in a lather and prevent or delay any meaningful change to the status quo.
Same playbook as the tobacco rage of yeas rs ago.
Trouble is its going to really stuff up the planet for a very long time. Lets see how this next Aussie summer goes.
Ditto the banks and the insurance industry: they see a bonanza coming down the track.
Don’t forget our vertical growth retailers, fuel companies and airlines
The ABC is just as bad.
A couple of Fridays ago on 774 Raf Epstein commented with a Nine reporter the current global weather events probably shouldn’t be reported as it would be too disturbing (or similar) for the public to listen to. And no, the weather catastrophes were never mentioned again.