Might be an idea to start making media funding a lot more open. GB news is obviously not making a profit.
My grandmother fell victim to Fox News. Super liberal, smart woman. Worked with disadvantaged children in NYC her whole life. Volunteered endlessly, donated more than she had to charities and food banks. Voted Dem her whole life until George W. Bush. (Aside from Reagan, who everyone voted for)
Now she is in her 80s. She watches Fox News all day every day. She says climate change is not human caused. She is racist. She is anti science. She is a Trumper. She’s completely lost the plot.
(edit: realized now this is UK community/instance, but the effect of the Murdoch empire is the same across the pond)
That’s it, the article is part of the Guardian’s Australian arm but the harm he has done is there, here in the UK and especially in the US. It would be bad enough if he’d wrecked one country but he has tilted the debate across the English-speaking world.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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prime minister Tony Abbott, who has repeatedly said he does not accept mainstream climate science and whose government repealed carbon price legislation, had been nominated for a board position.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”.
The original article contains 900 words, the summary contains 181 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
There are so, so many climate villains.
But it’s usually billionaires trying to avoid regulation and lifestyle changes.
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.
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.
People too busy pumping music into their heads to have any time to actually silently think.
Critical thinking is such a rare commodity.
People too busy working multiple jobs because they’re drowning in debt I think is a lot more common of an issues. The way things have become allow very little time for critical thinking not.
Plus the whole issues of schools being underfunded. A lot of kids probably aren’t even learning critical thinking skills or even being taught the importance of them. Anytime pre-workforce or secondary education is spent enjoying life while they still can (at least that’s what I was told at that age to do).
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…).
