Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Is the game finally up for the Fairfaxians ...?

Just to repeat that question ... is the game finally up for the Fairfaxians?

Have the sheep decided that to get the clicks they need to look and sound like Murdochian wolves?

First a flashback or two.

Last October the Fairfaxians grandly announced a change of policy:


You can read Climate change: a note from our Letters editors, but the take home message was a simple one:

We do not ban writers whose views suggest they are climate change deniers or sceptics. We consider their letters and arguments. But we believe the argument over whether climate change is happening and whether it is man-made has been thrashed out extensively by leading scientists and on our pages and that the main debate now is about its effects, severity, and what society does about it. 
Climate change deniers or sceptics are free to express opinions and political views on our page but not to misrepresent facts. This applies to all our contributors on any subject. On that basis, a letter that says, "there is no sign humans have caused climate change" would not make the grade for our page.

Oh it was all very grand and proper, but now we have to fast forward to a piece already noted by the pond,  "expert reviewer" John McLean, which was published under both the SMH and Age mastheads.

In the case of the SMH, it had an elaborate explanation of the content in the headers: How politics clouds the climate change debate, The world's so-called authority on climate change engages in exaggerated science and has become a political tool.


Thoughtfully, the Fairfaxians provided an illustration by John Spooner, a notorious denialist, as you can read in Climate change denialism, pedophilia and Fairfax Media, a piece which, since it was about a cartoonist and an illustrator, happily led with this cheerful cartoon by Toles:



But we digress.

Had McLean's piece been a letter, according to Fairfax's new standards, it would have fallen at the first hurdle, if only because of the disingenuous presentation of McLean's credentials, but also because of the many substantial misrepresentations within the piece.

You had to head over to Crikey to learn about that, with Elaine McKewon scribbling The Big Oil-backed denier who hoodwinked Fairfax.


You can read the rest at Crikey, paywall permitting, but at the best all you can say about the exercise is that Fairfax was economical with the truth, or profoundly ignorant, or deliberately perverse and wanting to follow the reptiles of Oz down the path of denialism.

So what happens next? Well yesterday Fairfax returned to the very same theme, or pretty dry well, with Tom Switzer:


Sorry about all the visuals, but the pond simply can't get enough of the increasingly desperate attempts of illustrators to illustrate pieces about climate science in a remotely interesting way.

You can read Switzer's piece in Game finally up for carboncrats if you like, but it is just a classic bit of trolling, of provocative click-bait, and a fact-free zone as Switzer indulges in a sardonic frenzy of abuse.

The Antarctic expedition, Chris Turney, Tim Flannery, the ABC and Q and A, climate-change cassandras, climate hysteria, doomsayers, doomsday scenarios, climate mitigation, "the madness" and the rest all cop a blast, along with that interesting tribe, "the sophisticates":

Thanks to Abbott's forceful critique of Labor's ETS/carbon tax, and the persistent failure of the carboncrats to reach legally binding global agreements, Australians have risen up against this madness. 
At last, there is recognition not just that there are at least two sides to every story, but that when sophisticates seek to shut down debate, it amounts to an attack on the public interest.

Actually it seems there are at least two rants to every story, and plenty of heat in the spray, and at least "sophisticates" makes a change from dangerous inner city elites, but the only impact it had on the pond was to sweep the world back to a more innocent time when all "sophisticates" of the Hugh Hefner kind wanted was a hi fi system, impeccable grooming and endless fucks with willing bunnies.


Talk about sophisticated! Yep that sets Switzer somewhere around November 1967 ...

Go on Tom, hit us with some more dangerous sophistication:


Now you might have noted by this point that the pond is today a fact-free zone, but that's because Switzer wrote a piece devoted entirely to his ranting opinions, and entirely free of facts in relation to climate science.

Possibly this is how he got around the stern Fairfaxian injunction of last October:

Climate change deniers or sceptics are free to express opinions and political views on our page but not to misrepresent facts. 

Well if you don't have any facts, it's pretty hard to misrepresent them. Or is it?

Meanwhile, 2013 marked the 15th year of flat-lined global surface temperatures, despite record levels of carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere since 1998. And as the US shale "fracking" revolution shows, the most efficient way to cut emissions is not via command-and-control regulation but by allowing private drillers to expand natural gas production.

Or by pissing billions against the wall on direct action!

And how about this bizarre generalisation, which nonetheless proposes a certain specificity:

Historians will probably look back at the years 2006-09 as the time when the climate hysteria reached its peak in Australia, when rational debate was at its most restricted and politicians at their most gullible.

Ah, the old "probably" deployed in a sophisticated way to get Switzer out of jail should it "possibly" turn out down the track that he's a goose of the first water ...

So what excuse did the Fairfaxians offer for printing this rant?

Is Switzer a credible climate scientist? Does he have crucial new information and insights to impart?

Nope:

Hartcher is on leave and Switzer is the designated pinch hitter?

Keen students of Godwin's Law will of course remember certain historical precedents:

Adolf Hitler is the author of Mein Kampf. Paul von Hindenburg is on leave.

And so on.

Joseph Stalin is the author of The Foundations of Leninsim. Leon Trotsky is on leave.

Never mind, that's enough money for the swear jar for a whole week.

Here's the real point. Switzer is freely available to read in The Spectator, Australian colonial division, but who could be bothered to pay for the pleasure and get around the paywall?

So why do the Fairfaxians give him air, and a plug for a competing brand, which is likely to struggle even more when all the big British guns line up down under?

The most likely explanation is that the Fairfaxians are now well down the path of trolling and click bait:

(first sighted at Crikey. Can Huff Post's sideboobs be far behind, here)

But it's painful to watch this mob try to work out the intertubes, and at what cost to credibility.

Switzer only generated 177 comments as of the time of writing, and a few stern letters, and you can, if you want, read them here by leading off with Seeking proof of biased views is no basis for a serious debate.

Ian Dunlop even came out to earn the letter of the morning, here, and yet another handsome entry in the illustrator stakes:


Oh it's all well and good on one level, and sure the pond is helping them out with their click bait routines.

Another day's controversy done and dusted, much heat generated but bugger all light, the can kicked down the road a little further, social media in an uproar, the Fairfaxians at the heart of the debate, and never mind the climate science or the way that Tony Abbott is currently proposing to piss billions against the wall designed not to fix a problem Switzer insists doesn't exist ... while praising Abbott for his handling of the science.

Yep, Switzer hasn't even made it to stage two of denialism, known as the Bjorn Lomborg stage these days, where climate change and the human role in it is acknowledged, but its impact minimised and dismissed or seen as a boon and an opportunity ...

As for Fairfax?

Well we know what they're up to, but it demeans them and it demeans their brand and it demeans the intelligence of their readership, and it never ever leads to any good, which is why this might just be another sign that the game is up for the Fairfaxians ...

And now, since there's been nothing to write about, at least in a factual sense, it's on to explore the Fairfaxian editorial strategy visually:








10 comments:

  1. Is anyone keeping count of ABC bobblehead radio using "both sides of the argument" trope?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You may as well try to count the number of angels on the head of a pin Trev. It's beyond infinity and that, as Buzz Lightyear reminds us, is a long, long way ...

      Delete
  2. DP, Switzer was joined this morning in the Oz by that internationally acclaimed believer in climate change : Mr Maurice Newman, investment banker. He was gutted by the “low-grade attacks on me following my piece "Crowds go cold on climate cost" (The Australian, Dec 31) readers of Fairfax publications”. Valium, valium where is the valium for the banker?

    Your statement, DP: “Is Switzer a credible climate scientist? Does he have crucial new information and insights to impart? Nope” equally applies to Newman

    I also read Ian Dunlop’s letter in the SMH and Newman has a reply to the Ian Dunlops of this world: “Germany is building 10 coal-fired power stations over the next two years with 15 more planned. The green delusion is finally confronting economic reality”.

    Newman refers to the climate scientist who “corrected his own public cheap shot at me” as only a “respected climate scientist”, whereas his climate change-denying guru, Roy Spencer from the University of Alabama, is referred to as an “internationally acclaimed climatologist”. If Newman wants to enhance Roy Spencer’s title to give greater credence to his opinion against AGW then two can play that game. Australia’s Tim Flannery is also considered to be an internationally acclaimed climatologist:

    http://uncw.edu/articles/2007/09/world-renowned-climatologist-addresses-global-warming/

    Flannery’s expert opinion is that “human activity is drastically altering the earth's climate and that before too long these changes will have a devastating effect on life on this planet”. Newman claims he believes in climate change and also accepts” carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. The trouble is, I cannot reconcile the claims of dangerous human CO2 emissions with the observed record.” I assume “the observed record” refers to a handful of IPCC critics such as Spencer.

    And anyone who has a contrary view to these critics is part of the “years of shoddy science and sloppy journalism”?

    And who will save us from this shoddy science and sloppy journalism?

    Newman: “If it wasn't for independent Murdoch newspapers around the world, the mainstream media would be almost completely captured by the IPCC establishment.”

    As Yeats wrote in The Second Coming:

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

    Murdoch is here to save us.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes HB, we'd taken a look at Maurice but you've beaten us to the punch. Still the more the bean bag is given a hearty punching, the sooner the beans take a more rounded shape ...

    You can imagine the hysterical laughter at the pond at the notion that the reptiles at the lizard Oz were here to save the world ...

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have just noticed your piece, DP, on Maurizio. But your opinion is always a joy to read.

    ReplyDelete
  5. http://roymustard.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/hypocritical-john-mcclean-is-a-hypocrite/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. http://mclean.ch/climate/global_warming.htm

      Delete
  6. Lord love a duck. Bless 'em. They've been let out; it's been really cruel how cooped up They've been. Now They're all over the landscape skittering, squealing, snitting and snotting all over their wee boat races.

    This World Government Boffins thingo is Real Serious Stuff. But. The Adultz have got Adultz things on their hindbrains. Hocks is banging on no end 'bout Corporate Welfare in teh ooze, today.

    (Hocks. Now there's an economic activity with a fine tradition. My poor old gassed grand-dad used to do it quite a lot. Just one of the three-fifths of five-eights of f'all benefits/pleasures he got from his WWI adventure).

    So. Just asking, loike. Will Nooms, Tones and Hocks be chasing down all them lost tax dollars (looking at you News Corp you cunning little "tax mover" you) to save us from the Big, Big 'comic 'mergency? The 'mergency that seems to have all the characteristics of an invisible gas.

    And. And. It's Fun Quiz-time (No conferring, or looking at answers written on your inner thigh, but others are fine). Who said in May 2007: 'Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can't afford the risk of inaction.'

    Oh come on. It's easy. Want a clue? It was spoke at a big, really, Really, important event that kicked off a wonderful program that a very responsible corporate citizen developed. Nooms and his climatologist mates must surely have been Shining Beacons lighting the Way for these masterfully responsible initiatives.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the link to the "Secrecy Jurisdictions, the ASX100 and Public Transparency" report. I'd heard some snippet about a report and News* being the most tax slippery in the country. I didn't know it was published by the UCiA though, interesting. Will they also do similar on religious entities of Australia?

      *News is mentioned at pages 12 and 40.

      Delete
    2. Of course! I recall, I read that snippet here. Thanks to DP.

      Delete

Comments older than two days are moderated and there will be a delay in publishing them.