An analysis of a global network of climate scientists and content “backers” found that the News Corp-owned channel in Australia was a key “content hub” for “influential people, skeptics and outlets”. The analysis, published by the British thinktank, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, found that Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News Australia consistently had a high score for attraction, pushing the party views of its hosts and guests to a global audience. through social networking sites. Sky News Australia said it had rejected the report’s findings, saying it would “continue to encourage debate” about climate change in its programs. The report looked at how anti-climate change views are being spread around the world, how content is being created and who is influencing the dissemination of these views. “Our analysis has shown how a small but dedicated community of actors can be proud of their disproportionate impact and dedication to social media, reaching millions of people around the world and being supported by old-fashioned print, radio and radio media.” “The failure to curb ‘misinformation and misinformation on the internet’ has allowed the integration of unwanted science, climate change and attacks on high-profile people working on the climate crisis,” the report said. He said Sky News Australia and contributors from News Corp.’s newsstands had set up a “content production and distribution system” that fueled “climate science skepticism and fears or confusion about mitigation efforts”. Chris Cooper, director at Purpose, an Australian-based consulting firm that works with organizations to understand their impact and help analyze the report, said: “Australia appears to have two major export industries. “One is emissions from fossil fuel exports and the other is content from these productive media.” He said Sky News Australia now has a “disproportionate contribution to global climate misinformation”. “We see content being shared through negative networks around the world.” Social media was making money through algorithms that prioritized “anything outrageous and exciting,” Cooper said, which meant that climate misinformation “reached millions more people than it would otherwise.” The report claims that Sky News Australia produced its own party content through the views of its hosts and also provides a platform for influential people from around the world to undermine the need for action on the climate crisis. In one example, a tweet from Canadian climate scientist Patrick Moore – which was overturned 16,000 times – was promoted by a section of Sky News Australia where former host Alan Jones described the young climate activists as “selfish, spoiled little bays who they signify virtue “. Most of the episodes, which are regularly edited in shared video, come from Sky News Australia “after dark” shows. Sky News Australia presenter Rita Panahi is identified in the report as a “key booster” along with other people from around the world. The analysis showed that before 2017, Sky News Australia published an average of 25 tweets per month on climate-related topics. But now they publish an average of more than 100 posts a month, with peaks of up to 300 a month. Cooper said the report’s goal was to raise awareness of the scale of global misinformation and misinformation, as well as the “factors behind it”. Another goal, he said, was to explain in detail to proponents of climate change action how misinformation travels around the world. Sign up to receive top stories from Guardian Australia every morning “No one is against freedom of speech,” Cooper said. “But it is about reinforcing and transmitting what is clearly misinformation, and that is the problem here.” Rejecting the report’s findings, a Sky News Australia spokesman said: “Sky News Australia broadcasts a variety of views on complex climate issues, including the broadcast of a major documentary coinciding with the Glasgow Climate Change Conference considered nuclear energy as a possible long-term solution to achieve zero zero emissions by 2050 “. “We will continue to encourage debate on the diverse and evolving climate-related policies of governments, businesses, scientists and campaign teams.” The report identified the five most popular sources of content shared among the “delays”, which were the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and the blog Whatsupwiththat. The report said the Guardian was “abnormal in this section, as the articles leaked were not in themselves misleading or justified data checks, but were nevertheless used to support the opposition’s lines of attack by collecting data or adopting a framework”. cultural wars “. The report identified key “reasons for the delay” being used to undermine action on the climate crisis, especially in the run-up to the 2021 UN climate talks in Glasgow. These included attacks on “unreliable renewable energy sources” or alleged inefficiencies of electric vehicles. Other popular issues were pointing out the big emitters – often China – and using their high emissions to relieve other countries of the need to act or argue that proponents of climate action were wealthy elites and part of a “New World Order “. More generally, the report said that denial of climate change and attacks on renewable energy sources often coexisted with feelings against trans and lockdown, as well as with misinformation about the pandemic.
