Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp publications will reportedly be changing their long standing climate change-sceptic editorial policy.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, News Corp will hold a fortnight long campaign in October calling for a 2050 carbon net zero target.
It will align with the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference, which is scheduled for November and will be hosted in Glasgow, Scotland by the UK, in partnership with Italy.
Traditionally, the Murdoch papers, as well as Sky News, have had a generally climate-sceptic editorial stance.
In late 2020, activist group Get Up collated a report analysing four of News Corp’s major publications between April 2019 and March 2020. It found that there were 8,612 articles published about climate change, and 45 per cent of those stories either “rejected or cast doubt on climate science”.
Some 65 per cent of comment pieces published on the topic expressed either scepticism or outright denial of climate change. That being said, 89 per cent of news and features accepted scientific findings on the topic.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the planned campaign will focus on employment, especially in the mining, resources and agriculture markets, and will allegedly be fronted by Joe Hildebrand. Hildebrand is a writer for news.com.au and former host of Studio 10.
Back in 2020, during Australia’s devastating bushfires, Rupert Murdoch’s son James Murdoch released a joint statement with his wife Kathryn referencing their “frusrations with some of News Corp and Fox’s coverage of the topic”.
The statement continued: “they are particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial of the role of climate change among the news outlets in Australia, given obvious evidence to the contrary.”
