Don Aitkin, foundation chairman of the Australian Research Council and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra. Provides a much needed counterpoint.....
I listened last week to an astonishingly ignorant radio interview of a professor of journalism who had measured the proportion of news stories in the Australian press that dealt with ‘climate change’ between 2011 and 2012 in the same three-month periods, and had discovered not only that the numbers declined over the period but that the proportion that seemed sceptical in tone had risen. ‘Quite extraordinary’, said the professor, and went on to say that scientists and journalists were both seekers after the truth, and when 97.4 per cent of scientists said that human beings were caused climate change, and they (the scientists) are truthful, why would newspapers be saying in effect that ‘climate change’ was a matter of open debate?
Read the rest at the link.
Last night I said Wendy Bacon should resign from teaching journalists at the University of Technology, Sydney.
My reasons:
Her new report on media coverage of global warming notes in approval a ban by Fairfax newspapers on articles by people sceptical of the so-called “consensus” position on catastrophic man-made warming.Bacon is critical of News Corp editors for letting me write articles critical of the consensus position.Bacon’s report devotes pages to criticising my writing on global warming issues without once identifying a mistake. The implication is that my error lies simply having a bad opinion - one that many (but very far from all) climate scientists don’t share.
Bacon is advocating not reporting but a shutting down of debate. A closing of the mind.
This is promoting not journalism but propaganda.
