One cold and cloudy weekend in Cambridge, an Australian zoologist decided to take a break from counting invertebrates and start counting something equally spineless: letters to the editor in The Australian.
Philip Erm, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, trawled through every letter to the editor published on Factiva — a news archiving database owned by News Corp — over the past six months to find out how many climate-focused letters denied climate change.
The result? Of the 306 letters addressing climate science, a whopping 67% were opposed to it. Just 16% supported it, and the rest were somewhere in between.
“I’d be lying if I said I was surprised in the least,” Erm told Crikey. But, he said, the recreational analysis was still important.
Erm was prompted by the Oz‘s recent editorial defending the publication’s “factual” coverage of bushfires and climate change.
“News Corp have always been quite brazen about their hostility towards all matters climate, even if they’re trying to downplay their record now that the country’s turning to ash,” Erm said. “I suspected that even the most cursory analysis would show a strong record of hostility to climate science and action.”
Erm added that the paper is “amongst our country’s greatest continuing contributions to fantasy literature”. So, while it might not be the most impartial analysis undertaken in a while, it’s still an interesting one.
The day old Rupert meets his maker, Satan, will be a turning point in Australian media , the extreme redneck bias of the media has turned millions away from watching /reading news limited and fox, only the truly brain dead rusted on rednecks still persist and its costing their stupid share holders millions in lost profits , sooner or later most of the Murdoch clan will be moved on a new board and CEO installed and maybe that new CEO might be James.
I think it will more likely be Lachlan, who seems to be a chip off the old block.
The ‘Worst (sorry, West) Australian’ is as bad as the Australian in its partisanship regarding global heating in its Letters page. When I was a subscriber, I noticed it published many letters from the same global healing denialists repeating the same tired misconceptions over and over again, but refused to publish my letters correcting the record.
I cancelled my subscription when they started publishing Andrew Bolt’s column.
I’d like to know how they get those presses under their rocks.
I’m glad someone has finally done a study on the News Corp letters column. For a decade I was a regular contributor to the Adelaide Advertiser, and even had some letters published that took the piss out of Bolt, Kenny, etc. (These had to be light and humorous, but the point was made). On one exceptional day, I even had two letters published at the same time. (A quick disclaimer; the paper was delivered to my workplace. There’s no way I’d buy it after Bolt appeared. Also, they didn’t publish my letter of complaint about his column lowering the tone of the paper. That’s acknowledged irony, by the way).
Then, around May of 2010, they stopped publishing anything I wrote. Many attempt were made, each progressively lighter, shorter, and apolitical, but to no avail, and I gave up writing six months later. An ex-journo told me I’d probably gone on their naughty list. At the time I thought they were joking, but I noticed that many of my like-minded letter writers had also disappeared, and a new set was growing, people who didn’t have much wit or perception, but whose hatred of the Greens, the Left, and small-L liberalism had now earned them the right to dominate what was purported to be public discussion.
I gave up reading the paper after that. Even though it was free.
I seem to have been similarly banned by the West Australian despite being a shareholder.
When Rupert dies I’m pretty sure he will , in death as in life, be forever closer to coal than to wind and sky.