News Corp’s shift on emissions reveals limitations of power

Cynicism may well be the only rational response to reports that News Corporation is about to launch a “campaign” urging the world’s leading economies to embrace a target of net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

For decades, and particularly in Australia, the Murdoch organisation has been at the forefront of the opposition to action on climate change. To be sure, over the years outright scepticism about the science has changed to vague suggestions that those urging action are “alarmists”.

The Murdochs have been at the forefront of opposition to action on climate change.Credit: Christopher Lorrimer

But the Murdoch press is one of the reasons that the climate issue has been so unmanageable for successive prime ministers.

The nature of the News Corporation “campaign” is not clear. The report in The Age suggested that dissenting voices among the notorious Murdoch mascots – such as Andrew Bolt – will be subject to limits “but not a muzzle”.

Meanwhile, speaking before the Senate Inquiry into Media Diversity on Monday, the boss of Sky News, Paul Whittaker, said it was not so much a campaign as “an exploration of a very complex issue”.

Sky News’ contribution would be a documentary, to be screened to coincide with the Glasgow climate change summit, focusing on “where we are in terms of current technology … I accept climate change is happening. The question is what is the solution and what is the cost.”

Sky News boss Paul Whittaker took the same approach as the Prime Minister, saying technology is the solution.Credit: Getty

That reads as though from the same song-book as Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s recent response to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Morrison said: “Technology changes everything! That is the game changer … that is why our approach is technology and not taxes to solving this problem.”

The shift to advocacy of net zero by 2050 comes after it has become clear that much more is needed, and much sooner, to avoid catastrophic consequences. Net zero by 2050 is now the minimalist, conservative position.

Nevertheless, this is a shift, and it says something about the nature and limitations of the power of the Murdoch organisation.

The campaign seems to be an explicit acknowledgement of something that on other occasions has been denied – that the organisation moves as one, in response to a single editorial “line” – though Whittaker suggested it was coming from the editors, not from the Murdochs.

The shift is apparently coming from the editors and not from the Murdochs.Credit: Peter Mathew

But what many miss is that the nature of the organisation’s power has shifted over the last few decades. Many politicians have yet to catch up to this change.

In 2015, political scientist Rod Tiffen published a study of state and federal election results in which the Murdoch press had campaigned hard for one side. He concluded that “Rupert Murdoch’s capacity to influence the outcome declines with each passing election.”

This was partly the story of declining media influence more broadly, but also because News Corporation had a particularly ageing, conservative readership. Said Tiffen: “Among regular Murdoch readers, there may not be many more Labor voters left to convert.”

Since then, other election results have told the same story. Most recently there was the 2020 Queensland state election. With a near monopoly in the state, the Murdoch outlets campaigned flat out against Labor, yet the Labor government was easily returned.

News Corporation has lost its raw vote-pulling power. Murdoch can no longer swing elections – if he ever could.

I don’t mean to say that the organisation has no power, or that its dominance doesn’t matter.

Rather, its influence now lies in framing and constraining national debate.

It does this in several ways: first, by giving succour, content and amplification to the right wing of the current government.

Second, it attacks and ridicules progressives, limiting their ability to gain a foothold in the debate.

Lastly – and here the left is partly to blame – it so needles progressives that they are tricked into spending all their energies in reaction – rather than charting their own path.

Why has it still, until very recently, been intellectually respectable in Australia to be a climate change sceptic, when that is no longer tenable in most countries in the world?

At least partly because News Corporation has tethered the debate at that end of the spectrum.

Yet, despite the justifiable cynicism, this move represents a shift, and it shows the limits of power when faced with evidence – with reality.

News Corporation has been heading into an intellectual, financial and even existential dead end. Advertisers flinched. The chances of renewing the ageing readership were disappearing. As successive surveys show, the outlets were losing audience trust.

News Corporation will still be trying to shape the debate, but it has been forced to shift ground to do so. That’s significant.

It may be too late. News Corporation may already be losing its grip. It’s something to watch.

Margaret Simons is an author, journalist and academic.