Australia’s self-centred media misses the real politics of the climate crisis

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.