Murdoch’s outlets, including Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and The Australian, have long been known to promote doubts about the cause and consequences of the climate crisis.
UK thinktank the Institute for Strategic Dialogue described Murdoch’s Sky News Australia as a global hub for spreading climate change misinformation.
In a foreword to a 2022 company environment report, Murdoch wrote News Corp was “filled with people who are creative and collaborative, and possessing an abiding sense of curiosity about the world around us”.
Fox Corporation announced on Friday that the former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, who has repeatedly said he does not accept mainstream climate science and whose government repealed carbon price legislation, had been nominated for a board position.
Rupert Murdoch’s son Lachlan, who is set to become the sole chair of Fox and News Corp after his father’s retirement, said Abbott had “skills, experience and perspectives” that would benefit the company.
Dr Peter Gleick, a co-founder of the California-based Pacific Institute, said Murdoch was responsible for pushing “decades of dangerous climate misinformation and denial to millions of people”.
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If there is evidence, can he not be charged? A lot of harm has been suffered by a lot of people from the actions directed by this one man. Death, disease, destruction - he's been a busy man, making money from harming others.
There be nothing you could get to stick, he'd just trot out "we were just asking questions" or "there was no consensus amongst climate scientists so we reported both sides". He'll escape any sort of justice this side of someone pushing him down the stairs (his grandkids can't be beat pleased about the world they'll have to live in but he raked in enough cash to get them on the last space ship off this dying earth so...).
Anyone can be charged with any violation. He’s a billionaire who - specific to this scenario - gained much of his billions by using the press as a cudgel to get the political system to yield to him. He will never be held to account in his lifetime.
As a side note, it’s more clear every single day that media literacy and critical thinking must be core competencies for everyone. We’ve skated on this for a hundred years and the planet is almost dead.