Rupert Murdoch speaks on James Murdoch’s exit from News Corp

The AGM lasted just 26 minutes.

Mr Murdoch’s comments are the latest to address the topic of climate change and the way News Corp mastheads approach it. The debate was ignited by former News Corp finance manager Emily Townsend in January, who sent an email to all employees accusing her employer of spreading a “misinformation campaign” on climate change that was “dangerous” and “unconscionable”. James went public with his perspective on the matter days later.

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News Corp’s coverage of the bushfires was revived earlier this month in a heated debate between former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and The Australian’s editor-at-large Paul Kelly on ABC’s Q&A. Mr Turnbull attacked News Corp for blaming last summer’s fires on arson and urged Kelly and other employees to speak out against the organisation. A story in The Australian in January during the crisis that drew a link between arson and bushfires was heavily criticised.

But News Corp has run other pieces that have questioned the legitimacy of widely-accepted climate change science over the past decade.

Columns by Melbourne writer Andrew Bolt and Sky commentator (and The Australian Financial Review columnist) Rowan Dean in the tabloids and former ASX chairman Maurice Newman in The Australian have described climate change as a “cult” and “a socialist plot”. In a broadcast on News Corp-owned Sky News, Mr Bolt criticised the “constant stream of propaganda” on the ABC about the climate crisis.

“We had 12 million hectares of our country burnt last summer and your newspapers were saying it was all the consequence of some arsonists,” Mr Turnbull said on November 9. “James Murdoch was so disgusted, he disassociated himself from the family business. How offensive, how biased, how destructive does it have to be, Paul, before you will say – one of our greatest writers and journalists – ‘It’s enough, I’m out of it’?”

A News Corp spokesperson tried to defuse the situation by arguing of the 3335 stories bushfire related stories by The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, The Herald Sun, The Courier-Mail and The Advertiser between September 1, 2019 and January 23, 2020, 3.4 per cent mentioned the words “arson or “arsonists”.

“The facts demonstrate starkly the falsity of Mr Turnbull’s claim,” a News Corp spokesman said.

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“In this same period, news.com.au also published more than 300 bushfire stories, of which only 16 mentioned arson, equivalent to 5 per cent,” the spokesman said. “Not one of these small number of stories stated the bushfires were ‘all the consequence’ of arsonists.”

An editorial in The Australian on November 13 said the newspaper published a wide range of views on bushfire-related issues such as land clearing, backburning, drought, climate change and building regulations.

“Arsonists were a small part of the story. By January 7 this year, police had arrested 183 people for lighting bushfires across Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania,” the article said. “As we editorialised on January 10: ‘The evidence of global warming since the Industrial Revolution is clear. More intense fires are an observed reality consistent with the predictions of climate change science.'”

Rupert Murdoch and News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson were also asked in the AGM about News Corp Australia’s decision in May to axe hundreds of jobs and stop the print editions of more than 100 suburban and regional mastheads in Australia as part of a major restructure.

“I would contest the idea there are news deserts in Australia,” Mr Thomson said. “In the fact decision taken, and it was a difficult decision given the provenance of the company, to shift many and most of regional and local papers to digital platforms was indeed to provide Australians with the best of journalism. The imperative was that there be journalists and it be done on a cost efficient platform.”