Crikey readers wouldn’t let an opportunity to air their grievances about News Corp and 2GB pass by, and so they came out to respond to our question about conservative media’s culpability in pushing climate denialism (part of Crikey’s new science denialism series). Meanwhile debate continued around the media’s role in the erasure of Palestinian identity, a topic raised following the murder of student Aya Maarsawe in Melbourne.

On News Corp’s role in climate denialism

Brian Crooks writes: Jones, Hadley, Bolt and the rest of the brain-dead spruikers from 2GB only preach to the converted. Nobody listens to them from the intelligent swinging voters or the disaffected Liberal voter base. They’ll still be shouting their bile from the port holes of the Coalition Titanic when she hits the ocean floor.

Deborah Hart writes: Given all that’s at stake, it’s criminal.

Robert Johnson writes: News Corp shareholders are paying for Rupert Murdoch’s personal derailing — on three continents — of the science and consequences of CO2 air pollution. It’s not an incidental occasional item, its a relentless drumbeat, a take-no-prisoners campaign costing News Corp and FoxNews and Sky TV a very large amount of shareholder funds. The losses directly reflect their fair share of the tax losses that Murdoch is fond of delivering in Australia. So Australian taxpayers are also subsidising his fixation. Unfortunately for his family, the public will write this glaring crime against humanity on Rupert’s epitaph.

On the politics of erasing Palestinian identity

Marcus L’Estrange writes: The Nakba is the disaster of the Palestinian people: the destruction of the villages and cities, the killing, the expulsion, the erasure of Palestinian culture. It is also the story of the Jews who live in Israel, who enjoy the privileges of being the “winners”. Israeli villages built on the remains of places that 70 years ago were Palestinian, their names erased. Lydda becomes Lod, Ashud becomes Ashdod, Aqir becomes Ekron and so on. In 1956 Moshe Dayan said: “We have turned their lands and villages where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into our home.”

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