Essay by Eric Worrall
Sky News Australia has allowed “junk science, climate delayism and attacks on high-profile individuals working on the climate crisis to become mainstreamed”, according to The Institute for Strategic Dialog.
Sky News Australia is a global hub for climate misinformation, report says
Murdoch-owned channel creates and distributes content promoting climate scepticism across the world, analysis finds
Graham Readfearn
@readfearnTue 14 Jun 2022 03.30 AESTAustralia’s Sky News channel has become a central source for climate science misinformation around the world, gaining high traction among conservative social media influencers and networks, according to a report.
An analysis of a global network of climate science deniers and “delayers” and the content they shared found the News Corp Australia-owned channel was a key “content hub” for “influencers, sceptics and outlets”.
The analysis, published by UK thinktank the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sky News Australia consistently ranked highly for traction, pushing the partisan views of its hosts and guests to a global audience through social media networks.
Sky News Australia said it rejected the findings of the report, saying it would “continue to encourage debate” on climate change in its programs.
…
The report said: “Our analysis has shown how a small but dedicated community of actors boast disproportionate reach and engagement across social media, reaching millions of people worldwide and bolstered by legacy print, broadcast and radio outlets.”
A failure to stem “mis- and disinformation online” had allowed junk science, climate delayism and attacks on high-profile individuals working on the climate crisis to become mainstreamed,” the report said.
It said Sky News Australia and contributors from News Corp’s stable of newspaper columnists had formed a “system of content production and distribution” that promoted “scepticism of climate science and fear or confusion around mitigation efforts”.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jun/14/sky-news-australia-is-a-global-hub-for-climate-misinformation-report-says
We obviously have to shield the public from harmful speech to ensure only approved green viewpoints are propagated, right? /sarc
The policy chair of The Institute for Strategic Dialog is Lord Adair Turner. According to Wikipedia, Turner served in high level UK Government positions such as his term as head of the UK Financial Services Authority, and has links to George Soros through Soros’ Institute for New Economic Thinking. Turner also in my opinion appears to be a radical population growth control advocate.
Yesterday Sky Australia’s Andrew Bolt had a great time ripping “the total idiocy” of our Australian political class, over their mismanagement of Australia’s faltering electricity grid and other issues. Andrew’s popular Bolt Report regularly holds politicians and other figures to account. Watching the Bolt Report, for me at least, is a similar experience to watching the USA’s Tucker Carlson.
So it seems obvious why silencing Sky is a priority for any greens who want to deflect public blame for the consequences of the economically ruinous green energy policies they promote.
The New Labor government of Australia is off to good start /s
they reap what they sow
2GB News
“Author Aaron Patrick joined Ben Fordham to talk about his new book which explores how Turnbull became a “destructive force” in the Liberal Party.
The book, Ego: Malcolm Turnbull’s and the Liberal Party civil war, details Turnbull’s journey from prime minister to apparent anti-Liberal.
“I think he deserves a lot of the credit, or the blame, for the destruction of the Morrison government,” Aaron Patrick said.
“He was having an impact in all those wealthy inner-city seats that all went teal.
“He was able to articulate why wealthy, wavering Liberals should not like Scott Morrison.
“Malcolm Turnbull played a role behind the scenes in some of the bigger scandals of the Morrison government, particularly some of the scandals that damaged Scott Morrison’s reputation with women… which all know was pretty decisive in this year’s election.””
The Guardian on line in Australia is nicknamed The Turnbull Times referring to him encouraging establishment of that news service in Australia.
A new word. ‘Delayism’. Apparently you can make it up.
I’ve invented a new class of words: ‘Guardianisms’. Defined as: soundbites made up of a noun plus appended ‘ism’ and imbued with spurious meaning.
I like to refer to the WEF cultists as Schwabians. It sounds sinister in a deck cleaning kind of way.
In the appendix to Orwell’s 1984 there is a short description of newspeak. In particular putting -ful on the end of a verb or noun. Doing the same with -ism seems to be the same sort of thing but in a way to make it bad.
Albanese/Labor was fighting tooth and nail to prevent the liberals from instituting some sort of reasonable energy system. He blames the previous government for the current woes.
What a hypocrite.
I think you will find that the phrase is Wong/Labor.
An Al is just the public face, not the person in charge.
We have experienced this situation before haven’t we.
An Al is a Biden clone albeit younger and supposedly without dementia.
Well he/they blamed the Morrison Coalition Federal Government for bushfires and floods ignoring that natural disasters are State primary responsibility.
And he conveniently ignores;
* The original Renewable Energy Target was 2 per cent as a trial, introduced in 1997/98 after the Kyoto Agreement was signed by the Howard Coalition Federal Government.
* Around 2010/11 the Gillard Labor Government increased the RET to cover 30 per cent plus subsidy incentives to private sector businesses that operate wind and solar installations. Labor also introduced a carbon tax and a renewable energy surcharge on electricity bills.
* After the RET was established State Governments, notably Labor governments, commenced the privatisation of State power stations and transmission line assets, and when Coalition governments were elected the process was well underway and could not be reversed.
* South Australia was first to close coal fired power stations and push for renewable energy replacements which ended in crisis with destabilisation of the grid a regular problem. SA relies on an interconnector to Victoria for brown coal fired power station electricity supply and is building an interconnector to New South Wales.
* Gas export was mishandled by the Federal Labor Government for offshore gas fields.
* State governments are blocking access to coal, uranium, gas, shale oil onshore reserves
Of course, in my opinion, both sides, Labor-Greens and Liberal-National) are responsible for the predictable crisis Australia is now experiencing.
I hope that an investigative journalist will research the history and publish it with no political bias.
Also consider that major industrial companies are again being ordered to close down when electricity supply is threatened, and being paid compensation for loss of income, taxpayer’s monies used of course.
So the transfer of manufacturing industry from developed nations to developing nations began after the signing (by Labor Federal Goverbnment here) of the UN Lima Protocol.
How many more of the industrials are now preparing an exit strategy or have activated one?
As Australia has been going woke the past two decades it is increasingly becoming a third world economy masquerading as a first world economy. It is increasingly captive to the “Gaia Religion” and gradually shutting down the economy. Most manufactured products come from China and local industry is handicapped by red and green tape and cannot compete with foreign manufacturers. Australia is over governed with three levels of government which are constantly at each others throats and nothing gets done. Eastern Australia has introduced a voluntary electricity reduction program this week as there is not enough electricity available in peak times. Coal and gas are demonised and talking about nuclear energy is “verbotten”.
The socialists are blaming everybody else for this energy crisis yet it is just as much of their own making. Australia has become the crash test dummy for unreliables, oops renewables!!!. Go figure!
Thanks, Australia! We here in the U.S. need another crash test dummy ahead of our November mid-term elections.
Obviously that one isn’t true – it’s what they have gotten done (renewable stupidities) that are the source of all the country’s problems!
That government is best, that governs least.
Thomas Jefferson
Taking a cue from Ed Zuiderwijk, sounds like an “Albanesism” to me.
Speaking of a global network of climate science disinformation….what does the Guardian think of CoveringClimateNow.org ?…oops a charter member…
I also thought it amusing that the Guardian was accusing another organisation of climate disinformation. A classic case of psychological projection.
My thought was “It takes one to know one.”
pot calling the kettle black
I’m pretty sure smear merchants don’t mind a bit when we use the phrases; “It takes one to know one” and “pot calling the kettle black”. We’re doing half their work for them . .
i see ABC aus is heavily promoting anything the lunatics at greenpeas have to say again as well from the very day after Labor got in
Don’t make the mistake of blowing too much smoke up Andrew Bolt’s blunt end.
Sure he does have a few core convictions – Climate Change(tm) is manipulation not science, Cultural/Racial victimhood is not historical fact – but deep down he is a Left and a media personality who knows he is only as good as his continued ratings.
Bolt is a Never Trumper and gleefully went on record as saying that Biden, despite the clear evidence of election fraud, still ‘deserved’ to be allowed to be US President based on the ‘Fine Words’ Biden spoke during the debates.
Bolt, 6 months later, gleefully ignored that he endorse Biden and jumped on the ‘Nuk Nuk Look at Senile Biden Nuk Nuk’ bandwagon as soon as it became popular with his demographic. So much for the ‘Fine Words’ Bolt spoke so proudly about.
He also had a massive fact optional bee in his bonnet over the French submarine deal, something he might still be rabbiting on about if it wasn’t for AUKUS. Turnbull – curse his name – made a press statement back in the day saying that the deal would ensure 50 years of submarines in Adelaide.
Bolt, in order to gain clicks, deliberately translated that despite all easily explained evidence to the contrary, that it would take 50 years to get all submarines delivered and then doubled and tripled down because he made good headlines.
(The – intended – reality? 12 new subs to be built and delivered at about 1 every 2 or so years. Each sub would have a service life of 25 years during which they would be maintained at the same shipyard. So – roughly – the first boat would have been delivered in about 3 to 4 years and remain in service for 25. The last boat would be delivered in about 25 and remain in service for 25 while being maintained at the same shipyard. 25 + 25 = 50 years of submarines in Adelaide meaning Turnbull – curse his name – was actually telling the truth. Bolt rejected that because it helped him with his editorial columns once a week.)
He is an opportunist journalist who grasps the details he knows he can make editorial over and ignores with a dedication that borders on actual stupidity anything that muddies his argument.
His content should be subject to questioning the same as everyone else’s.
I think you’re being a bit hard Craig. I’m a Trump fan but I think there is room in the world for sincere people who are not, though I admit I stopped watching for a while when I thought Bolt was going on too much about Trump. Is Bolt perfect? Of course not. Do I agree with him on lots of important issues? Absolutely.
Craig, the submarine capabilities for the RAN from my research favour conventional diesel-electric submersible ships because they are superior to nuclear powered in shallow seas, but do not have the very long range capability or potential firepower.
But I leave that to the experts.
For your information this article on the French design, note that it was not a converted nuclear submarine but was based on the hull;
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3470/australia-is-getting-the-baddest-diesel-electric-submarines-on-the-planet
From memory, what changed was the increasing threat from China which meant operating close to shore became less important and the ability to remain submerged for long periods of time became more important.
Well, I know what item is going to lead The Bolt Report on Sky News Australia this evening.
Congratulations to all involved at Sky News Australia for the gold medal performance!
We are seeing another example of the Conservative Advantage in action.
Lefts trust – correct – single sources of information to tell them how the world works, so by their logic clearly the Right must trust a – incorrect – single source of information as well.
Hence: Sky News Bad!
Lefts cannot actually fathom that a person may be capable of reaching an independent opinion. SOMEONE must be radicalising people! We must find this someone and shut them down! For the Greater Good.
(The Greater Good)
You see this same claim across multiple subjects and topics the moment the public starts to reject The Narrative. It is never that the product/argument being put forward is rubbish, it is because some radical groups are spreading disinformation to confuse the unwashed.
Look at any tv show or movie that has been rejected by the fans. It is never that the studio rejected establish cannon but insulted long time fans, it is Russian Bots review bombing and attacks by Racists.
SPOILER – the Right are capable of thinking for themselves. I mean I would simp for Daisy Cousins, but I still don’t watch Sky News more than once a quarter.
Like all leftist media, The Grauniad never actually attempts to rebut or refute the assertions Sky Australia makes, but instead resorts to innuendo and character assassination.
“Lefts cannot actually fathom that a person may be capable of reaching an independent opinion. SOMEONE must be radicalising people! We must find this someone and shut them down! For the Greater Good.”
It’s a form of projection, and a characteristic of those who only ever take the intellectually easy path. They live in an ideologically straightjacketed world where someone else must necessarily do their thinking for them – see how the current narrative always seems to be propagated ‘top down’ through the leftist media and spreads like a series of echoes. This relationship to reality being their only point of reference, they have to assume that everyone else operates in the same way.
Kudos to Sky News.
Junk science is what the Guardian is all about
Sky news tells it like it is.A bit like this site. It’s where I go for real world info’
Agreed, ray g. I watch Sky News Australia from the States, via YouTube.
Regards,
Bob
Dear Guardian Australia YouTube. Please allow comments on your channel so we can come over and have a chin-wag about disinformation. Thanks!
Loved this bit-
The report identified the five most popular sources for content shared among “delayers”, which were the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and the blog Whatsupwiththat.
How are yo’all doing with the Murdoch cheques as mine must still be in the mail although perhaps they’ve mispelled my address too.
In other breaking news the Oz NEM grid is officially broken-
Electricity trading suspended as energy supply crisis deepens across Australia’s east coast (msn.com)
The transition to renewable (so called) energy is based on Federal Labor’s RET and subsidies, the Abbott Coalition Government attempted to abolish the RET but was defeated in the Senate, however the percentage was lowered slightly and the carbon tax and renewable energy surcharge were repealed.
State governments have primary responsibility for electricity and gas supply (and water etc), they privatised State power station and transmission line assets and they only have the powers to approve development applications for building power stations, wind and solar installations, hydro power stations and other developments applied for, even for mines and gas fields.
So the new Labor Minister is not being realistic, quoting from the link above;
“The federal energy minister, Chris Bowen, has previously warned power generators that anyone using the current crisis to engage in market manipulation will face action from regulators wielding the “full force of their powers”.
Bowen has previously blamed the former coalition governments from Tony Abbott to Scott Morrison for a “decade of denial and delay” and almost two dozen energy policies that they failed to implement. In the absence of a national scheme, the states have increasingly pursued their own policies, particularly to encourage the uptake of renewable energy to cut carbon emissions but also to replace ageing coal plants that were mostly nearing the end of their designed operational lives.”
Free markets give abundance while socialistic governmental market manipulations (in this case green crony capitalist handouts) give shortages. When government-engineered shortages inevitably occur Leftist governments blame the greedy corporations, never their market interference on behalf of their benefactors.
Government picking winners and losers is a symptom of socialism, not capitalism.
Just because someone has money, doesn’t make them a capitalist.
In the case of government picking winners and losers, no matter the form of government, it is a symptom of corruption. The current crop of U.S. Leftist politicians and embedded Leftist Deep State’s mutually beneficial relationships with profiteering green scammers is called Crony Capitalism in my Funk & Wagnall.
We currently have: “… a Republic, if we can keep it.” Subsequent events have validated Ben Franklin’s concerns. The only thing holding back the socialists is our Constitution’s establishment of the type of government we are under. And its interpretation is up to the whims of only 5 people at various times is the scary part.
Looks like the Groan does indeed think 2 + 2 = 5; or did I miscount the number of references there!?
No Murdoch check; no Oil Company check; no nothing!
So what are we at Wattsupwiththat debating this for? Well, we want to know the truth, and as far as human-caused climate change is concerned, we haven’t found the truth yet. We say so, and some climate alarmists don’t like it when we do because it casts doubt on their alarming, dire claims about the Earth’s climate and CO2.
The climate alarmists have no evidence to back up their climate alarmist claims. They don’t want anyone to tell you differently, so they try to shut up anyone who does.
This is standard operating procedure for radical leftists. Free speech undermines the climate alarmist argument, and any other radical leftist argument, and they don’t like that.
”Sky News Australia has allowed “junk science, climate delayism and attacks on high-profile individuals working on the climate crisis…”
”climate crisis”… That sums up perfectly why Sky News is the sane alternative to chicken little alarmism.
And this: Sky News “promoted ‘scepticism of climate science’ “, which is exactly what journalists reporting on ANYTHING in “science” (not just climate science) ought to be doing.
Government owned or controlled broadcasting systems will inevitably become little more than a mouthpiece for the ruling elite.
Sky News must be doing something right if the Guardian is upset…
An interesting thought, Sky News programmes are broadcast free to air in country areas of Australia competing directly with mainly ABC television.
The National Party retained all their electorate seats at the recent Federal Election.
We often refer to the left leaning fully taxpayer funded public broadcaster ABC as “their ABC”.
I was amused driving in Canberra recently when I sighted a bumper sticker promoting ABC as the independent broadcaster.
The Grauniad (so named because of the number of spelling and editing errors) could not lie straight in bed. For them to claim that Sky perpetrates untruths is pretty much the wolf that says he does not like eating sheep.
Absolutely right.
And I challenge anyone to find anything in the Grauniad which would provide encouragement to the rational folk who seek to ‘delay’ Net Zero. Let alone the more rational and better informed folk who realise Net Zero is weapons grade bollocks.
Interesting that Sky Australia has people with IQ scores greater than their hat size.
Not remotely the case in UK, where Sky is as prejudiced and moronic as BBC.
They are different companies – Sky in the UK is owned by Comcast (purveyors of the US corporatist news agenda). Not sure who owns Sky News Australia but AFAIK it’s not Newscorp any more..
The Grauniad and all other Communist organisations always, as standard practice accuse their detractors of exactly of what they do themselves.
Lord Adair Turner, as you point out, was the head of the Financial Services Authority.
As such he was provided with several accurate reports of the oncoming 2007-8 sub-prime mortgage bust and recession, which, of course, he ignored.
His correct name, thus, is “The Watchdog Who Never Barked”.
Perhaps he would have been a little more effective in the job he was richly paid to do and also as the Director of the Confederation of British Industry, if he hadn’t spent so much time promoting Globalist GangGreen agendas.
He is a mendacious nitwit and it would be entirely appropriate for him to spend the rest of his miserable life in quiet contemplation. Preferably in a hight security unit.
Correct. I made the same inference directly to him and he said unless I apologised – which I did not – he said he would set the police on me. I said good luck with that. I might still have the emails.
Absolutely correct, guardian is a hub of disinformation. Good catch.
Their fears should be allayed by Sky News UK, who more than balance their Australian counterparts by going stark raving tonto on the alarmist claptrap.
My god who do these people think they are?
The report reads like something out of the Stazi files from old East Germany.
Check YOUR name isn’t on the list of people with unacceptable thoughts…
Not our fault your arguments stink!
Well, it’s the Guardian. Must be true.
The title is the “giveaway”:
“The Institute for Strategic Dialogue“.
The strategy is that all dialogue must support the narrative.
Adair Turner and Mike Berners-Lee are two guys who because I repeatedly sent them data which contradicted their rhetoric threatened me with police action to which I responded go for it but they did not. Renewables UK took the same approach because when they continued and continue to tweet gibberish about the performance of wind and solar I continued to make them aware of the decrepit performance of wind and solar.
Adair Turner unlike Berners-Lee is a clever astute guy who has managed to jump from one government appointed job to another just before the previous engagement spontaneously combusted. And when interviewed had the front to say “it didn’t happen on my watch”.
Like so many others who dabble with Alice in Wonderland green fantasy promoting the green utopian dream demands that they ignore the complexity of the climate and the cost and complexity of putting into action all of the infrastructure to accommodate their hypothesis.
If you read the ISD home page they are proud of training thousands of “activists” to go out into the world and flog the new religion of being green as though it is a viable solution to the problem which they invented so that they could proffer a solution the end justifying the means.
It seems as though Adair and his colleagues really do believe their status and privileges will remain intact whilst imposing on us via the restriction of energy a sack cloth and ashes existence piled on top of another belief that being green will be the only industry needed and as it said on Adair’s Wikipedia page he is in favour of helicopter money like Biden and Johnson that real money doesn’t matter. The endemic falsehoods hypothesis assumptions omissions and realities like the physical movement of stuff to fuel their apparitions don’t appear to matter. If there are lots of poorly education folk who are easily corrupted and brainwashed then organisations like IDS will spring to take advantage of their ignorance to push forward their infantilist subversive human hating ideology.
The only way for the planet to survive is the ultimate subjugation of humanity. Deprive them of nutritious food, deprive them of energy, deprive them or hope then and only then will wildlife for example survive but in reality not because hungry people will eat anything as was the case during the Little Ice Age when cannibalism was rife only second to bush tucker.
Funny how “mis/disinformation” always ends up being “anything that disagrees with the left”
“mis- and disinformation online” had allowed junk science, climate delayism and attacks on high-profile individuals working on the climate crisis to become mainstreamed,”
Sounds a lot like another entity we’re all familiar with …
ISD muppets.
They are pushing what is effectively Positive Discrimination
i.e. Something even worse than the real thing because the practitioners are liars from the very outset. But they don’t realise, blinded by their own good intentions.
The net result is a self fulfilling prophecy – they only make everything worse
Every time they start their whining about how somebody gets to express an opinion they don’t like, they always give such an eloquent description of their own side of the argument.
Fixed that one for ’em.
Problem is, it is not just “an opinion they don’t like”. It is demonstrably false “skeptical” claims that are in direct, disingenuous contradiction to a century’s worth of well verified evidence.
Let’s see your “evidence” then.
Socialists really hate it when some doesn’t repeat their lies.
Unfortunately, MarkW’s comment carries no credibility. He has far too often demonstrated, countless times in comments here, that he is entirely unable to discern genuine scientific truth from what are more than obvious “skeptical” lies.
Institute for Demagoguery
“Delayism” is plumbing new depths for “debate has ended” enforcement actions in the media and far-from-science politics.
is that a still from The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers? Donald Sutherland?
I think there’s a T-shirt slogan that describes this situation perfectly. “The Guardian. Wrong about everything, all the time.”
Link to background (And T-Shirt): https://camera-uk.org/2011/01/04/the-guardian-wrong-about-everything-all-the-time/
But are their arguments logical and based upon credible evidence?
“Our analysis has shown how a small but dedicated community of actors boast disproportionate reach and engagement across social media, reaching millions of people worldwide and bolstered by legacy print, broadcast and radio outlets.”
Isn’t that exactly how the climate doom-mongers ply their trade, and always have done?
Australia’s Sky News channel has become a central source for climate science misinformation around the world, gaining high traction among conservative social media influencers and networks, according to a report.
Now here was I thinking that what I watched and read had the ring of truth to it as they give sources and context to what they are saying and seem to have quite robust debate with those that disagree. Many of those on the gravy train don’t allow comments or discussion unless it’s to blindly agree with the accepted narrative. After a talk a friend asked what they said was a genuine question on a forum about Global Warming and was instantly savaged for even asking the question let alone questioning the “truth”.
James Bull