From Bothsidesism on the Existence of Climate Change to Bothsidesism on the Adequacy of Government Action on Climate Change in Australia

The next speaker in this ANZCA 2023 session is Victoria Fielding, whose interest is in reporting roles in climate disasters in Australia. Her focus is on the catastrophic bushfires in 2019/20, and the Lismore floods in 2022, and the way the media did or did not link these to climate change. These natural disasters were extreme, and part of a greater trend towards growing threats from climate change, and as such became part of a highly politicised debate around climate change in Australia.

While there can no longer be any question about the reality of catastrophic climate change, consensus about climate action still has not been reached in Australia; but democratic action around climate change cannot happen unless the media provide citizens with the information they need to engage in informed decision-making. The gradual rejection of the primacy of objectivity in journalism has enabled journalists to balance coverage on the weight of the evidence, and this is now leading to some extent to the exclusion of climate sceptic voices; some outlets continue to offer a false balance between scientists and sceptics, however, as seen most egregiously for instance with the ABC show Q&A, which has regularly featured avowed climate change denialists.

In some contexts, climate change reporting has taken on a greater advocacy role (and similar developments have been seen in the context of other disputed topics); increasingly, reporters have taken the position that it is OK to advocate for saving the planet, and this is exemplified best perhaps by The Guardian’s ‘Keep It in the Ground’ campaign. This moves away from the liberal model of a facilitative or monitorial journalism, and towards a more active advocacy role that ranges from conservative through collaborative (i.e. government-aligned) to radical roles.

In Australia, conservative and radical advocacy are both in evidence: NewsCorp outlets, for instance, are generally supportive of conservative political positions, while The Guardian has taken a more radically progressive political stance. Victoria examined this through a study of the coverage of the climate disasters by major Australian news outlets, and investigated especially the presence and framing of climate change aspects in this coverage.

Differences are notable; conservative media covered the crises much less, and rarely mentioned climate change in any significant way, while The Guardian, the Nine Entertainment papers, and ABC News also featured some radical advocacy and NewsCorp outlets sometimes also included conservative advocacy content. Experts, scientists, researchers, and academics were widely featured, while politicians (who will need to drive policy action on climate change) were far less present in the coverage.

Mentions of climate change are considerably more present than they were in the coverage of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, though, which indicates some improvement – but this is very unevenly distributed and mainly present in progressive news sources, while NewsCorp sources continue to downplay the role of climate change in the more recent crises. This might be understood as ‘denialism by silence’, and was excused by NewsCorp to some extent by saying that many of their staff were on holidays during the fire and floods crises.

Reporting on government responses to the crises was largely stenographic, too – government statements were covered, but rarely scrutinised in any significant way. This still represents a form of false bias – while there is less of this bothsidesism on the question of whether climate change does or does not exist, there is still plenty of it on whether current government action is sufficient or not.