Covering Climate Change and Countering Skepticism in Australia - Nieman Reports

when climate skeptics in government and media control the message and the channels, it becomes fact for people like councilor Allen that Australia’s fires... have “nothing” to do with climate change... Climate skepticism runs deep in Australia, origin of ... Murdoch’s media empire... long history of climate science denial and diversion... in the wake of Australia’s devastating bushfire season... politicization of climate change in media is facing a reckoning...

Murdoch media’s ... eentrenched confusion and doubt... skepticism has hamstrung the climate change story to a debate as to whether it’s even real... Climate scientists have warned about this for decades... a collision course with ... Australia’s $42-billion coal industry... climate change is not a matter of facts anymore — it’s a matter of “identity.”... a daily newspaper press nearly 60% dominated by Murdoch...

We don’t have so many journalists anymore so there’s a lack of knowledge ... Something as complicated as the energy industry or climate science requires subject proficiency...

News Corp... in some areas holds a monopoly...news articles from three of News Corp’s largest papers... suggested doubt or rejected the consensus on climate change 47%, 63%, and 67% of the time... opinion pieces... 51%, 84% and 97%...

University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute, climate skepticism is “predominantly an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon.” Outside Murdoch’s domain... politicization of climate change is largely absent... To essentially be unbiased... give weight which is proportional to the evidence...

Climate change is a slow burn... slow pace and massive scale is difficult to grip. How do you get drought... to rivet readers the same way a bushfire does?...the key is engaging storytelling... make incremental environmental changes feel personal and urgent...

Guardian Australia... “The Frontline” project... marries drone footage, video, audio, graphs, and text to create an immersive experience that bridges the personal and the global... makes the climate crisis a personal one... science-backed human stories are pretty hard things to refute