How Rupert Murdoch is influencing Australia’s bushfire debate
WOMBEYAN CAVES, Australia — Deep in the burning forests south of Sydney this week, volunteer firefighters were clearing a track through the woods, hoping to hold back a nearby blaze, when one of them shouted over the crunching of bulldozers.
And on Wednesday, Murdoch’s News Corp., the largest media company in Australia, was found to be part of another wave of misinformation. An independent study found online bots and trolls exaggerating the role of arson in the fires, at the same time that an article in The Australian making similar assertions became the most popular offering on the newspaper’s website.
Story continuesYet, for many critics, the Murdoch approach suddenly looks dangerous. They are increasingly connecting News Corp. to the spread of misinformation and the government’s lackluster response to the fires. They argue that the company and the coalition led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison are responsible — together, as a team — for the failure to protect a country that scientists say is more vulnerable to climate change than any other developed nation.
Days later, residents in a town nearly flattened by the fires heckled and snubbed Morrison during a visit to assess the damage. A new hire for Murdoch’s Sky News channel, Chris Smith, branded them “ferals” — slang for unkempt country hobos. Climate scientists do acknowledge that there is room for improvement when it comes to burning the branches and dead trees on the ground that can fuel fires. But they also say that no amount of preventive burning will offset the impact of rising temperatures that accelerate evaporation, dry out land and make already-arid Australia a tinderbox.
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