Media and Manipulation 13-07-2011

Press treatment of the Electricity Market Reform Bill offers an insight into systematic misreporting of climate issues in an effort to undermine public confidence in climate science.

The next day's “Daily Mail” headline roared with predictable fury: “Families face £1000 Bill for Green Energy”. By no means the only misleading headline or opinion piece about the impacts of decarbonising electricity supply, it typifies the way in which a significant section of the British press misrepresent issues surrounding climate change.

The real cost of supporting low carbon energy pale to insignificance when compared to the increase in costs caused by rising fuel prices. Department of Energy and Climate Change figures released by Friends of the Earth show that by 2020, developing low carbon, renewable power will make electricity cheaper, even if oil only rises to $150 dollars a barrel. Other forecasters back a far higher price – Barclays currently predict $180-185 a barrel, pushing fossil energy costs still further. The true public cost of not decarbonising energy supply will go far beyond future energy prices.

In a classic case of “privatising wealth but socialising cost" large sections of the the fossil energy industry wants to see “business as usual”. It won't have to pay for the impacts of climate change – we will, and the price will be a bleak future for our children.

The high price of hydrocarbons means vast profits for oil industry share holders so it's hardly surprising to discover that the virulent war on climate science has heavy backing from the energy industry. Over the years they have put vast resources into funding “junk” research and manipulating the media and public opinion. The reason? A direct attempt to discredit and deny outright that climate change is caused by human activities or that it poses any threat to the environment.

In the USA denial has become institutionalised and a matter of policy for the Republican party. At the heart of the campaign of misinformation and fake science is Fox News. It seems that News International's phone hacking operations are not the worse aspects of the Diggers media empire.

Murdoch is so central to the denial campaign in the USA that “Rolling Stone” have nominated him “number one Executive responsible for blocking progress on global warming saying No one does more to spread dangerous disinformation about global warming than Murdoch”. His Fox News channel  spreads disinformation about climate issues and helped set up the “Tea Party”, an exercise described by George Monbiot as one of the biggest exercises in false consciousness the world has ever seen.

The Murdoch Media empire is by no means the only news company to deliberately mislead its readers. In a brilliant Guardian blog A Hippocratic Oath for Journalists published earlier this week Monbiot describes the risks a media increasingly dominated by the interests of corporate wealth and powerful elites pose to the public. We need to think sensibly about sustainability - and we can't do that in a world where journalists put the interests of corporate greed ahead of the truth.