Media Watch host blows hot and cold on bias and balance in the climate change debate

ONE ABC host's rare exhibition of balance just looks very much like the same old groupthink.

Jonathan Holmes on Media Watch on Monday:

Holmes: This week, we're going to look at a fascinating and rather disturbing phenomenon: the way a large number of commercial talkback radio presenters deal with the contentious topic of climate change. It shouldn't need a government regulator to tell influential radio hosts to provide at least a modicum of balance on a subject as crucial as this.

Holmes on ABC Online's The Drum, March 4, 2010:

"Bias", too much of it, and "balance", the lack of it, are by far the major pre-occupations of those who complain to, or criticise, the ABC. "Bias" is notoriously difficult to pin down. After all, where one listener hears "right-wing bias", another will hear a "rare exhibition of balance". And vice-versa.

Holmes on Media Watch on Monday:

One reason that people are so angry is that fewer and fewer believe that human-induced global warming is actually happening.

Will Steffen, executive director of the Australian National University Climate Change Institute in a letter to Media Watch on its website:

We don't use the word "believe" in science. We look at the data, interpret the data and make observations. We try to understand how systems are operating.

Tim Dean (who?) on The Drum yesterday:

Why is it the odds of someone being sceptical about climate change shoot up if you find out they're on the conservative side of the political spectrum? It's because, to conservatives, climate change is a moral issue.

Kevin Rudd, April 4, 2008:

The greatest moral and economic challenge we will face in the 21st century is climate change.

Lachlan Harris on his old boss Kevin Rudd on ABC1's Q&A on Monday:

He's got a very, very difficult job at the moment. He's doing it very, very well, and he's enjoying doing that job. I've got no reason to doubt it.

Christopher Pyne: I've heard that formula before a few times over the last 18 years. I've been around a lot of leadership changes in the Liberal Party. That's the formula we usually use. They're very happy doing the job they're doing now.

Tony Jones: It seems to happen in both parties oddly enough.

Pyne: It's a bipartisan formula.

Julia Gillard on ABC 774, August 6, 2009:

Jon Faine: Is [there] succession planning between you and Kevin Rudd.

Gillard: Let me just clarify all of this for you. I am Deputy Prime Minister. That's what I want to be; that's what I decided to be; that's the decision I made back in November 2006 when Kevin and I presented as a team for Kevin to be Leader of the Labor Party and for me to be Deputy Leader, and having succeeded in the 2007 election, to be Deputy Prime Minister I absolutely love what I'm doing.

Joe Hockey, October 8, 2009:

Malcolm has my absolute, unqualified support. He always has had that. He continues to have that. He will have that into the future. The job I want is Wayne Swan's job.

Meet the Press, May 2, 2004:

Journalist: Do incumbent treasurers risk being worn out if they stay there too long?

Costello: It is a big job. It is the second biggest job in the government. There is only one job that's more significant.

Guess that explains Chernobyl. Kerry O'Brien on ABC1's Four Corners on Monday :

Even if the environmental exposure turns out not to be serious , Fukushima does still throw up significant questions, not least the policing of standards at nuclear power stations, most of them run for profit. An independent presidential inquiry found that BP had put money before safety. Why would the nuclear industry be any different where the profit motive is at stake?