Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Rupert's pollution: What does UK phone hacking have to do with Australia's carbon debate?

Two apparently very different stories have been dominating the news in the land of my birth and where I currently live.

In the UK, the News of the World phone hacking saga continues to snowball, with more revelations promised. There are now over 4,000 targets identified (including royalty, celebrities, politicians (even Prime Minister Brown), police, as well as bereaved relatives of soldiers, homocides and terrorism victim), but the story has grown much larger as it becomes clear that the real issue is the cover up. The phone hacking itself was illegal and shockingly callous, representing an abuse of society's willingness to grant journalistic freedom in the pursuit of truth (compare the Wikileaks saga, where the revelations are of much greater social significance and the methods used by the media apparently legal). But knowing that the practice was indefensible, it is becoming clear that News of the World apparently went to great lengths to prevent the full extent of the abuse from becoming public: making payments to police, seeking to pay for silence from early victims in a way that would remove evidence from police investigations, obstructing those investigations by foot dragging, destroying evidence, making misleading statements under oath and contributing substantially to a culture of fearful self-protection amongst politicians who might speak out about the problem. It is not yet clear how far up the chain of authority blame lies, but it seems fair to say that if some of the people currently denying knowledge of what was going on are speaking the truth, then they have become immensely successful while simultaneously being willfully neglectful and culpably negligent. The relative portions of blame to be assigned to journalists, editors, owners, police, politicians and the reading public are still unclear, but the problems are systemic.

It is, however, hard to deny that a hefty portion of the culture in which such abuses can occur can be traced to a situation in which a single man owns such a large chunk of the media that he can threaten political careers and so create the complicit silence in which police corruption can flourish and his underlings feel untouchable. Numerous politicians, including Cameron himself, have been emboldened by the events of the last week to admit their fear of Murdoch had lead them to silence or a soft tread.

So my hunch is that such systemic wickedness arises not so much due to the press being under-regulated, as from its being too concentrated. The crimes and wrongdoings that occurred at News of the World (and likely at other major papers) occurred not simply through lack of oversight, but because editors felt that they were in certain senses above the law, that public figures who openly questioned their modus operandi could be crushed in the court of public opinion through the very media they would be trying to shine a light upon.

Removing that dangerous sense of invincibility includes diluting the power of any one individual through diversifying media ownership. And this, of course, is where the BSkyB deal is intimately related to the whole scandal. Not only ought it be thrown out in light of the revelations of widespread illegality and contempt of the rule of law operating within News Corp, but the appropriate response ought to include the break-up of Murdoch's existing empire into smaller pieces to prevent the kinds of concentration of power that help to generate such pervasive corruption.
And to make Murdoch and News Corp pay their taxes. They are amongst the worst offenders for tax dodging. Murdoch has personally dodged hundreds of millions of pounds of taxes, possibly billions. Of course, this doesn't stop his papers offering lectures on the need for austerity measures to balance the budget.

What does this have to do with the carbon debate in Australia? While phone hacking is getting some coverage, the antipodean front pages are filled with claim and counterclaim about atmospheric chemistry and tax reform. The link is Rupert.

Murdoch's media empire spans four continents and is, by some margin, the largest news media conglomerate in the world. And from Fox News to the Australian, from The Wall Street Journal to The Daily Telegraph (the Sydney tabloid, not the UK broadsheet), Murdoch publishes a huge share of the denial, false balance and misinformation about climate change to be found in the mainstream media (as documented here, here, here and many other places). This is not to say that he only publishes denial, but many of his organisations are the worst offenders at giving equal weight to the claims of highly reputable scientific institutions and ideological think-tanks with significant funding from major fossil fuel companies. It is clear that this is often deliberate policy in order to sow confusion and thus delay and dilute effective collective action.
Murdoch is not, of course, the only wealthy individual deliberately throwing (bull)dust into the air.

This is part of the insidious effect of hyper-capitalism upon democracy. Rather than generating competition and diversity, the concentration of extreme financial wealth in the hands of the few that defines hyper-capitalism risks enabling the further conformity of politics to the interests of the ultra-wealthy. Media plurality is a necessary condition of a free society. So is the avoidance of extreme inequality.

And a postscript: stories like this give me hope. A young TV reporter with a dream career ahead of him makes an important realisation.
H/T Rod Benson.

41 comments:

Richard Hall said...

A fine piece. One small query: are you sure that the Telegraph is part of the Murdoch empire?

byron smith said...

Yes, my reference was ambiguous. As a long term Sydneysider, when I think of the Daily Telegraph, I think of the Sydney tabloid (owned by Murdoch's News Corp) rather than the UK broadsheet (which is not). I should have made this clear.

byron smith said...

Crickey: A sample of how the Australian Murdoch press are spinning this scandal by the foremost (in terms of sheer output) climate denier in the Australian media.

byron smith said...

Climate Change Social Change: "But the Australian media bias for climate denial is not limited to the opinion columns in the Murdoch press. The bias is often just as telling in what the mainstream media choose not to report. British climate denier Lord Christopher Monckton’s tour of Australia in early 2010 overlapped with a visit by US climate scientist James Hansen. Both were visiting Australia to promote their views on climate change. A Media Monitors study, published by Crikey in March, found that Monckton received 455 media mentions. Hansen, one of the world’s top climate scientists, received a mere 21 media mentions. Even the ABC mentioned Monckton about 18 times more than Hansen (161 mentions to nine)."

byron smith said...

Monbiot: A Hippcratic oath for journalists. Might not be such a bad idea. There is nothing to stop individual journalists from undertaking such a pledge today.

byron smith said...

Just a thought.

Could Greece turn out to be Murdoch's unlikely saviour (by removing media attention)? We'll see. Anger against Murdoch in the UK has got a lot of momentum at the moment, but remember how quickly anger at the banking system after the financial crisis in 2008 was redirected into anger at the MPs over their expenses.

byron smith said...

Orion: Take back the media. A battle call for re-localising media.

byron smith said...

Here's a comment I posted on another thread that I didn't want to lose and which is relevant here:

Murdoch’s poisoning of the carbon debate is a major factor in the political lethargy and divisiveness over this issue (esp in US and Oz). One of our best hopes in the short term is that the Murdoch scandal continues to grow and that politicians in Oz and US start to become as bold as those in the UK have suddenly become over the last few days (at least in words – how well they follow through remains to be seen). The very act of speaking out together is liberating and I think at least some of their expressed relief at being able to say “me too! I’ve been scared of Murdoch but didn’t want to be first to say it” is genuine.

It may well be important for Australians to get a sense of just how much outrage there is in the UK about this, and just how deep the rot is being revealed to have spread. It is no longer mainly about hacked phones, but about corruption, cover-up and deceit at the highest levels of media, police and government (though disgust at the hacking of a dead teenager’s phone in a way that lead police and family members to think she might still be alive sparked the deeper revelations). The top two officers at the Met police may well lose their jobs soon. MPs openly laughed at their testimony in committee yesterday. Cameron changes his position daily and is in a fraught situation that could see serious damage to coalition and his leadership (he hired and continued to defend a disgraced editor long after there was ample evidence that he was involved in serious criminality). The potential for this to snowball in unexpected directions continues to grow.

Of course, the Greek default could trigger a different kind of snowball that quickly takes all the oxygen in the room (to mix my metaphors).

byron smith said...

SMH: Unearthing the truth will take a judge.

byron smith said...

PM Gillard on media ethics: "Don't write crap … Can't be that hard. And when you have written complete crap, then I think you should correct it."

As my friend Mark Stephens noted, this is probably the best thing she has said since getting elected.

byron smith said...

The Guardian continues its excellent coverage of the unfolding train wreck. Too many stories to note, though there are some very interesting developments occurring.

One small detail that caught my eye for its irony was this video on the resignation of Rebekah Brooks, in which the 7% owner of News Corp, Saudi princeAl-Waleed bin Talal Alsaud, said "Of course she has to go". The prince is listed by Forbes as the 26th richest person in the world. Many are pointing to that interview as the straw that broke the camel's back. But what caught my eye was this oil baron and investment tycoon sitting on his luxury yacht in the middle of some sparkling harbour giving a lecture on the importance of ethics. Priceless.

(I freely admit I have not done a great deal of research on this man, though a number of the headlines about his work appear highly commendable, with major donations to significant causes and publicly voicing pro-democracy and pro-women opinions. Nevertheless, I have trouble counting someone whose fortune was built substantially on oil and banking as a highly credible source of ethical advice).

byron smith said...

This would be breathtakingly comical if it weren't for the fact that it is par for the course on Fox.

byron smith said...

I get the distinct impression that it is only today that the Murdochs (Rupert + James) have finally awoken to the true gravity of his situation and has entered damage control with his full attention.



In the last 24 hours Rupert is meeting the family of the murdered girl whose phone was hacked (the story which got the avalanche started), James has published a full page apology in various places that actually starts to sound a little more serious (rather than dismissing the whole thing as a "little problem" as Rupert did yesterday), Rebekah Brooks has stepped down as editor (after Rupert had initially said that his top priority was protecting her), they have agreed to appear before a paliamentary inquiry, and they have started serious(ly comical) spin on Fox.

Why? (a) Because they have now been threatened with gaol if they don't show before a parliamentary inquiry; (b) because it is clear the entire UK parliament has turned against them; and critically (c) because it is no longer NotW, but the future of News Corp itself (including Fox) that is at stake. Note that the story has now decisively spread to the US, where the FBI are launching a preliminary investigation into whether any News Corp employees sought to hack into 11th Sept victims and whether News Corp can be charged with bribing foreign officials (which is illegal in the US). Particularly if the former turns out to be true, then the reputation of the Fox brand could quickly turn to mud with many of its most ardent supporters due to the reverence in those victims and their families are held.

byron smith said...

Oh, and the next largest shareholder in News Corp has spoken out against what happened (see comment above), and various other investor groups have started making very angry noises about the damage being done to their share value.

byron smith said...

I promise I hadn't yet come across this article when I made my comments immediately above, but it is very close to what I was saying.

byron smith said...

From Avaaz:

Dear friends across the UK,

For decades Murdoch has ruled with impunity -- making and breaking governments with his vast media holdings and scaring opponents into silence, but this week we showed that people power can beat him.

Since November we've led the fight against Murdoch’s media takeover! Through almost 1 million actions, 7 campaigns, 30,000 phone calls, investigations and countless stunts and legal tactics, we've blocked Murdoch’s BSkyB deal! Jeremy Hunt twice said our 200,000 submissions and threat to sue delayed the government's sign-off on the deal.

Now we need to make sure justice is done, press for media laws so this never happens again, and take our red-hot UK campaign global, to roll back the Murdoch menace everywhere. The dirty tricks and illegal hacking don't stop with one paper, or one country. Murdoch's empire systematically breaks the law and undermines our democracies across the world. We're loosening his grip on the UK, but he still has a strong hold over the US, Australia and other countries. Let’s join together to stop him:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_rupert_murdoch_donate_uk/?vl

Here's the plan: together we can a) help investigate and get justice for News International’s abuses in the UK and beyond b) organize prominent voices to speak out on this issue across the world and c) mobilize people behind new laws and legal actions that stop Murdoch and clean up our media for good.

Avaaz members live in every country where Murdoch works, making our movement the only one that can truly take a campaign against his global empire and win. The time is now -- If just 10,000 of us donate a small amount each, we can seize this once-in-a-generation chance. Click below to chip in:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_rupert_murdoch_donate_uk/?vl

For weeks, daily revelations have uncovered the extent of Murdoch media's corruption in the UK. His operatives hacked the phones of thousands of people, including grieving widows and murdered schoolgirls. They stole a Prime Minister's bank information, paid huge sums to police officers, and staged a massive cover up, which included James Murdoch authorizing hush money to victims.

But this is the tip of the iceberg -- Murdoch is a global problem. He's famous for dictating editorial positions to his papers. He corrupts and controls democracies by pushing politicians to back his extremist ideas on war, torture and a host of other planetary ills, and destroying careers with smear campaigns unless they do his bidding. In the US, he helped elect George W. Bush and has most of the Republican presidential candidates on his payroll (see sources below). His Fox News Network spread lies to promote the war in Iraq, pushed resentment of Muslims and immigrants and spawned the right-wing tea party. Maybe worst of all, he has helped block critical global action on climate change.

Thanks to all of our work - including the newspaper ads, legal teams and successive stunts to provide media visuals -- Murdoch's reign of fear is breaking down, and politicians in the US and Australia are beginning to speak out. His empire is beginning to crumble, but we need to widen the cracks by making sure justice is done and politicians pass laws to clean up the media for good. Let's make it happen together:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_rupert_murdoch_donate_uk/?vl

Our community kept campaigning on this issue when almost everyone else in the UK gave up hope. Because we're people-powered, we don't have the same fear of Murdoch that almost everyone else does. It's part of the promise that people power has for change in the world. Today, hope is breaking out in the UK -- let's keep the pressure up!

With determination,

Ricken, Alex, Emma, Maria Paz, Giulia, Luis, Alice, Brianna and the rest of the Avaaz team

byron smith said...

(This email came with footnotes and links to sources for its various claims. I'm happy to pass them on upon request, but can't be bothered adding them to this message atm.)

byron smith said...

Further to the comments above about Murdoch finally taking this seriously, another senior News exec departs.

byron smith said...

I mentioned Greece above as a possible "saviour" for Murdoch. Larry Elliott suggests that it is the other way around: Murdoch may have been distracting Europe from Greece (and Italy). He's not in an optimistic mood.

Byron Smith said...

NYT: The [Wall Street] Journal becomes Fox-ified. The decline of the WSJ under Murdoch's ownership.

Anthony Douglas said...

I was going to say, you answered your question in the second sentence, with reference to a snowball!

And then I felt shy about commenting on this thread, without being called Byron Smith...but then I saw Richard and felt ok about it. Hope he's not a pseudonym you've invented, Byron, to cover yourself...;-)

byron smith said...

Spiked Online: Why losing Rupert changes (almost) nothing.

"Which brings us to the present day and the harebrained idea that loosening Murdoch's alleged grip will liberate and re-populate with principle the British political sphere. Whatever you think of Murdoch - I am not a fan, and I believe that the phone-hacking antics at the News of the World were deplorable and indefensible - this is clearly nonsense. Because it was the already existing disarray of the British political sphere that empowered Murdoch in the first place. The respectable commentariat has effectively declared war on a man who was merely the beneficiary of historic political fallout, not the orchestrator of it. Remove him from the picture and those various profound problems - the emptying out of both left and right ideologies, the aloofness of the political class, the transformation of politics into a purely elite pastime - will still exist. Our politicians will still have nothing of substance to say, just fewer tabloids in which not to say it."

byron smith said...

Anthony:
with reference to a snowball
Care to elaborate? I'm not sure I follow you. Are you suggesting that the debate has snowballed out of control or were you making some link to snowballs in a warming world?

And on a serious note, do you find the extra links in the comments off-putting? I have a friend who keeps an alias on his blog (available to all users) which is called "Just some news" and encourages people to post links to relevant blogs/media pieces as a resource for others and for future reference. I quite like the idea, though didn't really think a different alias was required. I've been posting more links to relevant pieces on all kinds of old posts and find it a useful way of filing stories and arguments (though when I've got multiple posts on a particular theme, finding a story can get a little more difficult). Anyway, I'm genuinely interested in feedback on this practice.

Anthony Douglas said...

It's fine, I was just stirring you.

However, if you want some serious feedback on it, I'll give you this: I don't always read comments on every post, and I suspect I'm not alone. Is it worth editing the original post to indicate if you've added a whole lot of extra content below the (RSS) fold? Probably not every time, but I can't imagine people would mind it once per post.

byron smith said...

BG: A thousand questions but just one issue: "There is a single issue at the heart of the News Corp. scandal from which all others emanate, and that is the influence that the corporate world and the very, very rich have over supposedly democratic institutions and a supposedly democratic society."

byron smith said...

Guardian: If News were a liberal organisation in a Republican White House/Congress, they would already be toast.

byron smith said...

Hot Topic: BBC shifts its stance on science reporting. A welcome report, that points out the difference between balance and impartiality, and that balance is built into the process of scientific discourse itself, making the words of a respectable scientific publication much more like to already be balanced than the words of a lobby group.

byron smith said...

CP: More on the BBC report and the Guardian's take.

The review itself is available here.

byron smith said...

The Conversation considers the BBC report.

byron smith said...

Keith Olbermann on why people don't whistleblow within News Corp, speaking from personal experience.

Byron Smith said...

SMH: The record of Murdoch's national broadsheet The Australian on climate. It is not pretty. This short article is a summary of a much longer and more detailed piece. Tim Lambert has been recording The Australian's war on science and is up to seventy posts.

byron smith said...

Robert Manne: Zealotry is not in the public interest. A reflection on The Australian's uncritical support of Ian Plimer.

byron smith said...

Stephan Lewandowsky: Murdoch's pollution of Australian climate media.

byron smith said...

Grist: What would it look like for media to take climate seriously? A very interesting conversation between two journalists.

byron smith said...

Media Matters: Wall Street Journal: dismissing environmental threats since 1976. Media matters (itself no stranger to controversy over its funding, of course) has put together a timeline of the WSJ's response to a number of major environmental threats, showing that with each issue it has followed the same tactics of delay and doubt.

byron smith said...

WSJ: A New Climate-Change Consensus. That this appeared at the WSJ at all is the big news.

byron smith said...

UoCS study finds that between Feb-Jul 2012, Fox News made 40 representations of climate science and in 37 cases (93%) these were misleading.

Furthermore, eighty-one percent of letters, op-eds, columns, and editorials in the Wall Street Journal's opinion page were misleading on climate science from August 2011 to July 2012 (39 of 48 references).

byron smith said...

John Cook: What happened to climate change? Fox News and the US elections.

UoCS: Got science? Not at News Corp.

byron smith said...

Guardian: How Murdoch tried to buy the US presidency by offering to bankroll a candidate and offering Fox as in-house support for a candidate managed by Fox President.

byron smith said...

MM: 10 Dumbest things Fox said about climate during 2012.

byron smith said...

A report on the media coverage of climate change in Australia. In two parts.

Sceptical Climate Part 1: Climate Change Policy
Published December 1, 2011
Climate change policy has dominated Australian politics in recent years. While journalists often criticise others for poor communication, they should also be accountable for how they communicate climate change. This Australian Centre for Independent Journalism report analyses how ten publications in mainstream corporate media covered carbon policy for six months in 2011.


Sceptical Climate Part 2: Climate Science in Australian Newspapers
Published October 31, 2013
The role of media in a democracy is to truthfully report contemporary events and issues to the public. This includes scientific evidence about the crucial issue of climate change. If people are confused or ignorant about potential threats, they cannot be expected to support action to confront them. This report looks at coverage of climate science in ten Australian newspapers between February and April in 2011 and 2012 and asks: What is the quality and nature of climate science reporting in Australia? What role are these publications playing in informing the public about climate science?