ABC Chairman Maurice Newman made a few comments yesterday that may go a long way to explaining some of the pressures editors and producers at the public broadcaster may be under – specifically on the issue of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
This collective censorious approach succeeded in suppressing contrary views in the mainstream media, despite the fact that a growing number of distinguished scientists were challenging the conventional wisdom with alternative theories and peer reviewed research.
While claiming some of his best friends were journalists, Newman attacked the profession for uncritical group thinking on a range of issues (Enron, tech meltdown and the GFC) and further outing himself – with language that could only be described as that of climate skepticism.
Of course Newman is welcome to hold whatever views he wishes, that is not the issue.
As Friends of the ABC spokesperson Glenys Stradijot pointed out in a statement, “this looks like an attempt to influence ABC programming to be more favourable to global warming skepticism.
“Mr Newman needs to explain why he took the step of criticising the media’s coverage of global warming and why he addressed that criticism to ABC staff.”
Stradijot also alleged that Newman’s former position as chairman of the Center for Independent Studies (CIS) might be a factor in informing his world view on the subject.
A transcript of Newman’s interview and explanation with Brendan Trembath of the ABC can be found here.
Further reading: The inimitable Stilgherrian and Crikey’s Eric Beecher.
Shock! Horror! Political journosphere shocked by the ALP playing politics!
Ben Eltham has a wrap up of the week in politics at New Matilda. It’s certainly fair to say that it certainly didn’t go all the Coalition’s way. What surprises me about the commentary we’ve seen in the lead up to and after the resumption of Parliament is some sort of default assumption that Tony Abbott would release his climate change policy, and happily elope with the voters, and that’s the last we’d hear of politics in an election year. Dennis Shanahan is, as always, indicative:
There’s some sort of bizarre alternate reality here, where the Opposition is constantly at the centre of events, and any sort of response which doesn’t play to the ‘media narrative’ from the Government is somehow electoral poison.
It’s just nuts. I suspect, in part, it derives from a belief that if the Liberals could unite behind one leader, all would be plain sailing from there on in. In fact, as one week of Barnaby-isms demonstrates, even without leadership speculation, they’re still shambolic. I think there’s still some sort of weird assumption that the Liberals are the natural party of government, and that the electorate are finally waking up to the mistake made in 2007; hence Labor is represented as being panic stricken after a single poll where their two party preferred vote is 52-48. (John Howard’s first term government, by contrast, spent a large part of the time behind in the polls.)
So we also get a bizarre perception that Labor is some sort of immovable object, locked in behind last year’s politics, and unable to shape the political landscape. This is reinforced by constant generalisation on the basis of anecdote – “voters are concerned by debt and deficit”, “Rudd is untrustworthy”, “climate change skepticism is on the increase”, very little of which has much support in any relevant polling. And the descent of Rudd’s own approval rating from its stellar heights is seen as an avatar of doom, without any particular attempt to correlate it with the party vote.
All very odd.
Like I said early in the week, watch the political narrative change.