Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Award winning journalist Wendy Bacon is intensely disappointed that not even The Guardian seems interested in her efforts to root out climate heresy.
Data proves decades of lies in Murdoch media climate change coverage
By Mia Armitage
March 17, 2021Mia Armitage & Sean O’Shannessy
When the proof is in the pudding and the spice is climate change, it can leave a bitter taste: after all, it’s no surprise to learn data shows Murdoch media bias.
…
Acclaimed Walkley Award-winning investigative journalist Wendy Bacon has delivered the goods, having released similar yet smaller in scope studies since the turn of the millennium.
For her latest opus, she led a team of more than twenty trained volunteers in a mission tracing through decades of Murdoch media headlines, opinion pieces, columns, news articles and letters from across Australia.
The results show for more than the past two decades, 45 per cent of Murdoch media climate coverage and references have been at least sceptical or at worst outright denial of the phenomenon happening all around us.
Wendy Bacon said none of the fifty-five Murdoch publications studied at one point were ‘good’ on climate change coverage but the worst was The Daily Telegraph, traditionally Sydney-focussed.
…
The significance of her findings had been undermined, Ms Bacon said, by mainstream media coverage.
‘It’s almost greeted with silence, not a word on the ABC about it,’ she said, ‘not even the Guardian, and that was disappointing’.
…
Read more: https://www.echo.net.au/2021/03/data-proves-decades-of-lies-in-murdoch-media-climate-change-coverage/
Wendy’s research is available here. From her research paper;
- The total of relevant items was 8,612. (Section 4.1).
- Nearly half of all items (44%) were in The Australian. (Section 4.1).
- Information-based reportage (news and features) was 38% (Section 4.2). Nearly two-thirds (62%) of the coverage was commentary (editorials, opinion, and letters). The strong influence of commentary on the overall message about climate change is evident, both in volume, and in seeding and shaping ideas and analysis.
- All of the four News Corp publications produce substantial amounts of material that is sceptical about the findings of climate science. Overall, 45% of all items either rejected or cast doubt upon consensus scientific findings. (Section 4.5).
- The Daily Telegraph is the most sceptical of the News Corp publications, with 58% of content discussing climate change being sceptical (Section 4.5).
- Most News Corp reporters do not actively promote sceptical views. Reportage (news and features) was less sceptical than commentary (editorials, opinions, and letters), with 89% of reportage accepting climate science findings. (Section 4.5).
- Commentary items (editorials, opinions, and letters) drove scepticism in all News Corp publications. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of opinion pieces were sceptical towards climate science (Section 4.5).
- Out of a total of 2,309 opinion articles, the top ten opinion writers accounted for 44% of content. All of these opinion writers are either climate change sceptics, promote scepticism in their articles, or are negative towards climate action/efforts. The top five were Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair, Peta Credlin, Peter Gleeson, and Chris Kenny, all of whom are occasional or regular Sky News presenters. (Section 5).
The Guardian might have failed so far to properly publicise this effort to root out climate heresy, but never let it be said that WUWT ignores research of Wendy Bacon’s calibre.
I don’t have time to read this as I have to warm up the car and put on extra clothing in the midst of the coldest March in my lifetime. Will check back later.
Scissor, same here in Argentina. We are suffering our second significant cold rains spell for this summer. Sign me “waiting for that global warming deal to kick in”.
Meanwhile, in West Central Scotland I am basking in 16 degrees Celsius and sitting in my garden in glorious sunshine. Long live global warming. Or at least the global warming that brings warm weather.
In rural Burgundy meanwhile we are in the middle of the coldest March since we came here 11 years ago, and no sign of respite till the end of the month.
I’m still working to reduce the size of the piles of snow on either side of my driveway (we received about 60 cm of snow over the past weekend). It’s supposed to be sunny and warm the next two days, so that will help. However, to begin on Sunday, the forecast calls for three days of snow in a row.
Don’t you worry. This year is on course to be the hottest ever!
*yawn*
Is that based on real weather historical data records, or creatively accounted computer modelling data?
In Australia all records from before 1910 ignored because they do not assist the creative accounting of a warming trend.
How dare you!
There is no room for the former in Climatology,only creatively accounted computer modelling output is acceptable.
Garbage In Gospel Out.
Don’t you worry. This year is on course to be the hottest ever!”
You forgot the (sarc) tag.
And the incessant rain in NSW is great for farmers, lousy for everyone else. !
Can I have just a couple of fine days.. please !!
Australia, a land of droughts, bushfires, and flooding rains.
“A land of Drought and Flooding Rains” Dorothy MacKeller 1895.
Isn’t it time that “the government” stopped the rain?
Or at least the mouse plague.
I guess the foxie and the cat will be happy saw some footage take one ship load of mice bait to get rid of that lot
Media is calling this rain weather. If it was bushfires or drought it would be called climate change. Either way I don’t care, I just stepped out to the shops, felt a few drops of rain, and then was drenched. Was cold too!
Farmers can’t plant if the ground is too muddy. If it gets too wet during the growing season roots can rot. Finally if it rains to heavily just before harvesting, the grain can be knocked off the stalks and ruined.
Ha! Ha! Ha! Fabulous! So her’s is an example of award-winning journalism? What a waste of time and effort on a non-problem!
Disinformation by the mainstream media is a serious problem.
When Wendy refers to climate science is she referring to the IPCC’s faux science?
She also refers to the consensus science. Where does one find that? If the answer is “The IPCC reports” it proves they have not read them. There is no published “consensus”. What the NYT prints does not establish it either.
The difference between what is in the reports and what people assume is in the reports is yawning. The reason for the discrepancy is the Summary for Policy Makers which lives in its own universe in which our physical laws do not apply.
Always strange that the Summary appears months before the report it summarises. But then I guess they need time to change the report to match the Summary once the politicians and activists have created it. No different to most climate papers – start with the conclusion and work backwards.
The IPCC actually does this.
After the UN member bureaucrats compile their summary for policy makers, they send it back to the lead authors of the various science study groups so that these authors can edit their reports to be consistent & supportive if the summary for policy makers.
Science to order.
Yes, pretty sure that’s what she’s referring to.
IPCC’s pronunciations are gospel to her ilk.
Climate Gate 1 & 2 email evidence of creativity in faux science.
“The Walkley Awards are the pinnacle of achievement for any Australian journalist.”
Every wine producer has at least one golden medal, which it awarded to itself.
I bet Wendy uses fossil fuels every day, every day…the flaming hypocrite.
Like 70% of electricity from coal fired power station steam turbine generators.
Up to, when the wind blows and the Sun shines, around 12% from wind and solar equipment.
What is there to report about climate change?
Even the most concerned green would say that there is no new science worth mentioning – it is settled.
So all that is left to report are policies and their impacts.
But as all climate change policies are very expensive and inevitably ineffectual (as the policies are not global) then the reporting has to be negative.
That’s the news. Climate change policy is expensive and pointless.
what ?? Paul Murray didn’t get a mention ?? Obviously her research is not accurate nor complete !
But the report author did mention Naomi Oreskes. And in doing so, illustrated exactly how the report offers inaccurate, unsupported assertions. Page 39, last paragraph:
Go to the report’s Bibliography, and “Oreskes 2004” is for Naomi’s infamous 928-to-0 consensus ‘study’ results in the Dec 2004 issue of Science magazine ……. which doesn’t say a word about “fossil fuel interests.”
Maybe she should have read rather than count the articles. She might have learned something.
Sounds (exactly) like cancel culture coming for climate wrongthink. Can Facebook and Twitter fail to use her in their own efforts?
First Karen, now Wendy.
Meanwhile, YouTube keeps blocking Tony Heller.
People who propagate lies have a vested interest in silencing truth.
So 55% of Murdoch coverage was pro climate change.
Progressives are never satisfied with anything less than 110% for whatever their position is today.
Good point. Murdoch was right down the middle on coverage.
The problem Wendy has is Human-caused Climate Change is not accepted as fact by many people, mainly because there is no evidence for it. Wendy wants consensus, so if 46 percent disagree with her views, that’s too many.
The bigger problem is that there has been zero evidence of the C in CAGW. Even if AGW exists, without the C, why worry?
At least using Lewandowsky 97% logic:
If you don’t explicitly deny the assertion, you must be in agreement with it.
Got John Cook his PhD!
Since there is nothing bad about the changes caused by our CO2 emissions the coverage should be positive. More CO2 in the atmosphere provides added energy for:
1) Significant enhancement in plant photosynthesis.
2) Small increase in the convective water cycle.
3) Slightly cooler days and slightly warmer nights.
That is where the extra energy is spent. None of the energy goes to any warming. In fact, the above items may very well require more energy than CO2 provides.
and longer growing seasons
“For her latest opus, she led a team of more than twenty trained volunteers in a mission tracing through decades of Murdoch media headlines, opinion pieces, columns, news articles and letters from across Australia.
The results show for more than the past two decades, 45 per cent of Murdoch media climate coverage and references have been at least [skeptical] or at worst outright denial of the phenomenon happening all around us.”
*****************
THE WITCH HUNTS ARE ON!! JOIN THE WITCH HUNT!!
DEATH TO THE HERETICS!! BURN THE WITCHES!! BURN THE WITCHES!!
Or, in contemporary terms: she’s a baby. Plan the little “burden”. Cannabilize her profitable parts. Sequester her carbon pollutants. One step forward, two steps backward.
Good all the way to the last few seconds.
McCarthy was certainly a demagogue, but it is now an established fact that there was large-scale Communist infiltration into the US government, and that the American Communist Party was a willing tool of the USSR.
The US not only had a right, but even more so an obligation, to investigate Communists and remove them from government.
Pat:
I acknowledge that there likely was some legitimacy to what McCarthy was doing back in the day. He however became the target of the media and the famous journalist Edward R Murrow in particular….
“The hearings reached their climax when McCarthy suggested that the Army’s lawyer, Joseph Welch, had employed a man who at one time had belonged to a communist front group. Welch’s rebuke to the senator—“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”—discredited McCarthy and helped to turn the tide of public opinion against him. Moreover, McCarthy was also eventually undermined significantly by the incisive and skillful criticism of a journalist, Edward R. Murrow. Murrow’s devastating television editorial about McCarthy, carried out on his show, See It Now, cemented him as the premier journalist of the time. McCarthy was censured for his conduct by the Senate, and in 1957 he died. While McCarthyism proper ended with the senator’s downfall, the term still has currency in modern political discourse.”
https://www.britannica.com/topic/McCarthyism
I suggest that McCarty became a victim of his own over-zealousness, paranoia and ego which led to his downfall in the end. He became drunk on what he was doing.
I probably should have used some other video which confined itself to a discussion of the European and early American witch hunts.
The witch hunt part (99%) was well done. Though I do think the US was a bit over-represented in the map.
Joe McCarthy was almost a one-man show. “McCarthyism” itself is a term composed to discredit the whole anti-Communist investigation in the US, and anti-communism generally.
McCarthy is often associated with the House Un-American Activities Committee. But McCarthy was a Senator, not a Representative.
>>
House Un-American Activities Committee
<<
It’s actual name was House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA). The media switched names to make it sound like the committee was un-American, and so the acronym HUAC could be pronounced.
Jim
She says about 45 percent of the coverage was skeptical in nature? That sounds just about right for balanced reporting…
Yeah. She couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
The fact that Ms Armitage is studying how the media is covering this topic reveals that it has nothing to do with science.
“Overall, 45% of all items either rejected or cast doubt upon consensus scientific findings. (Section 4.5).”
Ms Armitage’s own biases are reeking in her “Study”
Wonder if she even giggled when looking at items that “cast doubt upon consensus scientific findings”.
That’s kinda journalism’s job, or it used to be. Ok, decades ago, but still…
Which consensus science is she referring to? The IPCC’s faux consensus science?
JournoLism.
Journa£ism.
Well, every religion needs a Witch Finder General, I guess she’s auditioning.
Have to get in line, though, there are quite a few, and even though the Walkley Award is probably an awesome “gold star”, it can’t compare to the Pulitzer and Ultimate “gold star”, a Nobel Prize, so I doubt Mann will ever have that much competition.
Quasi-religion. She’s Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic, relativistic (i.e. ethical).
“ she led a team of more than twenty trained volunteers”
Trained seals, perhaps?
You have no proof of that. Just because she paid her volunteers in raw fish is no proof.
😉
Trained in what, exactly?
Why do I suspect that Wendy’s solution to all of this non-conformism would be government agents vetting every article before it can be printed?
Instead of studying Murdock pubs she should study the many hundreds of science papers showing the actual temperature data from all around the world that show no warming trends.
She went looking for something specific and found it. And the point is?
Emailed to Ms. Bacon:
Dear Wendy,
“Propagation of Error and the Reliability of Global Air Temperature Projections” …
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2019.00223/full
… demonstrates that climate models have no predictive value.
The IPCC does not know what it is talking about. Literally.
Climate modelers are not scientists. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/24/are-climate-modelers-scientists/
The whole claim about climate change being driven by human CO2 emissions rests on false precision.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abstract/10.1260/0958-305X.26.3.391
You claim to be “particularly interested in stories which are of public interest but fail to get a fair run in the media.” Let’s see if that’s true.
Supposed human-caused climate change is a scientific crock of the first water.
Knowing that is certainly in the public interest but catastrophically fails to get a fair run in the media.
Truth to power, Wendy.
Oh, about climate skeptics? They’re right.
Yours,
Pat
Patrick Frank, Ph.D.
XXXXXXX
XXXXXXX
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
These things are, we conjecture, like the truth;
But as for certain truth, no one has known it.
Xenophanes, 570-500 BCE
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You speak facts to truth. She believes in truths that speak to facts.
Conversely, 55% of coverage over the past two decades has been pro catastrophe.
Wendy isn’t living in the real world or she is just demented. Certainly streaky bacon.
You know lefties. A majority isn’t good enough so off the Gulags with the 45 percenters for some re-education.
Give her another award or she’ll release the hounds on you too.
According to Wendy Bacon, it’s not “good” to tell the truth.
Wendy Bacon
@Wendy_Bacon
Journalist, Researcher, Activist. Past Prof Journalism UTS
Wendy Bacon (@Wendy_Bacon) / Twitter
Lefties don’t do irony.
Correction: “journalist”
Some places “UTS” stands for
“Up To Sh1t”
Wow, “Most News Corp reporters do not actively promote sceptical views.”, reporters that actually report.
And the photo looks like she is psychopath.
Well I hope that is not the typical face of a psychopath, she looks just like my mother.
Have you seen a picture of Michael Mann?
Only in a line-up.
Wendy is very upset that all dissent hasn’t yet been stamped out.
“Most News Corp reporters do not actively promote sceptical views. Reportage (news and features) was less sceptical than commentary (editorials, opinions, and letters), with 89% of reportage accepting climate science findings.”
So what she’s kvetching about is opinion or editorial pieces. Apparently, we are not allowed to have opinions contrary to those Wendy holds. Shocking!
Einstein would have been helpless against ether enforcers with award winning witch hunters like this.
How can people be so dull and obtuse that they fail to recognize how brilliant and relevant Wendy is? No doubt, some day the world will look back and regretfully lament, “if we had only listened to Wendy. Sigh.”
AH Ha ! Wendy’s article proves that nobody cares what she thinks !
I just stopped by Wendy’s and got a bacon cheeseburger…..and fries.
Get ma Dave’s double next time you are there, easy on the sauce
Please and thank you
“I’m right and you are wrong.
And the fact that you disagree with me proves you are wrong.”
Liberal logic.
Speaking of climate heresy: https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2021/03/18/texas-montana-lead-21-gop-run-states-in-suing-biden-admin-over-keystone-xl-suspension/?sh=47fd64595f6a
The wheels are coming off the climate bus.
I’ve noticed that commenting on one blog in the Murdoch press gets so heavy handed and unbalanced moderation that it’s pretty much one far leftwing comment after another on some days, with a few rightwing comments that either have to be ultrapolite or poorly written to get through. And the leftwing comments are clearly from a small number of paid social media influencers. Criticism of global warming doesn’t get published unless it’s a silly rant.
It’s all about stopping misinformation, supposedly. This was even passed around to the troll farm so that one comment in March was unfairly rebutted. Someone had paraphrased something that they read about Covid, and described it as it’s a single molecule of protein that is easily destroyed by washing hands. The nasty reply didn’t quite get the virology right, either, but it’s claims of costing lives was stupid as this comment pointed out what the WHO and CDC forgot to shout from the rooftops because they were preoccupied with politics.
The opinion writer jumped on it and wrote the first article in Australia in a newspaper pointing out that virus can be destroyed by washing with soap and water or an alcohol based hand sanitizer. He obviously didn’t discover this. He just discovered how important it was to get the message out, one that the left thought was dangerous just because someone from the right thought of it.
What is “scientific consensus findings”? I don’t recall ever hearing about that when I was taught the scientific method in school. Perhaps I missed out on the definition since I didn’t major in “journalism”.
There are more than 4 News Corp publications in Australia…
…an investigative journalist who is also a political activist
And every bit as impartial as the BBC, no doubt. I thought the url most amusing echo.net.au
You can’t make it up.
It was an intriguing project from the outset. For a non scientific journalist to self proclaim wisdom and then embark on a derivatives count on derived articles is an exercise of the greatest folly. Those volunteers must be ruing their own lost opportunities/time as a result of the putative trawling exercise unleashed by Wendy Bacon. Rue the day.
Being an investigative journalist she’s actually missed the biggest fraud event of her life.
The word “good” is a subjective adjective, i.e. meaningless in science
So nearly 2/3rd of it is double plus wrong-think.
Burn ’em. Burn ’em all!!!!!!!
Wendy Bacon is retarded
The dangerous human caused global warming theory has become a religion after 30 years of brainwashing in the media by ignorant journalists. Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist, what a joke! I’m a climate blasphemer and a climate heretic according to her, because this has become a religious concept. Here’s my answer https://youtu.be/UJOEr964GpI
‘Elevator speech’ time.
What is she actually saying?
That Murdoch’s publications do not provide adequate coverage of those who question climate catastrophist views?
This just goes to show the forces of evil behind those who wish to take control of our lives.
It is well known that CO2 change always occurs after temperature change due to temperature determining the rate of generation of atmospheric CO2 so it is impossible for the later CO2 change to be the cause of the earlier temperature change.
If there was such a thing at the Greenhouse Effect and as 52% of the Sun’s rays are in the infrared spectrum, part of the incoming radiation would be back-radiated into space before it could warm the Earth. That would cause the Earth to cool with increasing CO2 concentration. Thank goodness that the Greenhouse Effect is a lie.
Because the force of gravity decreases with distance, the atmospheric pressure, arising from the weight of the atmosphere, is greatest at the surface. The ideal gas laws tell us that this means the temperature is greatest at the surface but the UN IPCC said that this was due to the fictitious Greenhouse Effect and completely failed to mention the gravity induced temperature-pressure gradient in the atmosphere.
So much for award wining journalism when the recipient has no scientific knowledge or could it be that she has a monetary or political motive?
The CO2 induced global warming proposition is the greatest fraud yet devised by mankind.
Claim: “All of the fifty-five Murdoch publications studied … were ‘good’ on climate change”
Fixed the error…
She graduated with a Bachelor of Laws degree but apparently stopped practising? She was also from memory a notorious student activist.
Of course in climate hoax science people will experience extremes of weather, dams will not fill and then will fill, summers will be hot and then not so hot, winters will be cold and then colder, extreme weather events will increase and decrease, it all depends on what the spin doctors want people to believe.
Meanwhile Earth Cycles continue, naturally.
“none of the fifty-five Murdoch publications studied at one point were ‘good’ on climate change coverage but the worst was The Daily Telegraph”
Boy is this going to make Tim Blair (editor of the Telegraph) happy to know he is the worst of the worst on climate change. His head was swelled enough already, but now it probably won’t even fit in his bmw clownshoe.
Like they did in the good ole’ days in the dark ages…burn the heretics and the blasphemers and “deniers” as enemies of the climate change church.
Beware The “Watermelons”
https://mises.org/library/watermelon-summit
An environmentalist is a totalitarian socialist whose real objective is to revive socialism and economic central planning under the subterfuge of “saving the planet” from capitalism. He is “green” on the outside, but red on the inside, and is hence appropriately labeled a “watermelon.”
“Watermelons” are as numerous as flies on a herd of cattle and will never give up on their pipe dream of a centrally planned socialist world economy…
This is research? Of course it is biased, and thankfully! I am surprised it was only 45% negative on climate change, every Sky News Australia vid I see mocks climate change mercilessly, as it should be.
I hope Neils new GB TV will be the same!
funny as a daily reader of 2 murdoch papers online I see their soft on green iems
and myself n hundreds of others then have a field day ripping into em on comments
way more general public are anti warming when ALLOWED to post!!
Just like a competent scientist a competent journalist must be a sceptic. Awards or not, this journalist fails that fundamental test.
Seems Ms. Bacon is looking for total devotion to the cause. A person that is 99% sure is still a sceptic and that is a problem for her. Glad she’s not my mom.