Crikey readers wouldn’t let an opportunity to air their grievances about News Corp and 2GB pass by, and so they came out to respond to our question about conservative media’s culpability in pushing climate denialism (part of Crikey’s new science denialism series). Meanwhile debate continued around the media’s role in the erasure of Palestinian identity, a topic raised following the murder of student Aya Maarsawe in Melbourne.
On News Corp’s role in climate denialism
Brian Crooks writes: Jones, Hadley, Bolt and the rest of the brain-dead spruikers from 2GB only preach to the converted. Nobody listens to them from the intelligent swinging voters or the disaffected Liberal voter base. They’ll still be shouting their bile from the port holes of the Coalition Titanic when she hits the ocean floor.
Deborah Hart writes: Given all that’s at stake, it’s criminal.
Robert Johnson writes: News Corp shareholders are paying for Rupert Murdoch’s personal derailing — on three continents — of the science and consequences of CO2 air pollution. It’s not an incidental occasional item, its a relentless drumbeat, a take-no-prisoners campaign costing News Corp and FoxNews and Sky TV a very large amount of shareholder funds. The losses directly reflect their fair share of the tax losses that Murdoch is fond of delivering in Australia. So Australian taxpayers are also subsidising his fixation. Unfortunately for his family, the public will write this glaring crime against humanity on Rupert’s epitaph.
On the politics of erasing Palestinian identity
Marcus L’Estrange writes: The Nakba is the disaster of the Palestinian people: the destruction of the villages and cities, the killing, the expulsion, the erasure of Palestinian culture. It is also the story of the Jews who live in Israel, who enjoy the privileges of being the “winners”. Israeli villages built on the remains of places that 70 years ago were Palestinian, their names erased. Lydda becomes Lod, Ashud becomes Ashdod, Aqir becomes Ekron and so on. In 1956 Moshe Dayan said: “We have turned their lands and villages where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into our home.”
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When will the shareholders of news limited wake up to the damage and financial losses inflicted on their company by Rupert Murdoch’s mad lust for power that is driving the intelligent viewers/readers away in droves, nobody with an ounce of intelligence watches fox news or bolt or any of the other redneck loonies, and they now have to give the telegraph away at McDonald’s to keep the circulation numbers up, the once great Australian newspaper is nothing more than a joke and the Financial review has lost all its credibility., Murdoch should just give the local undertakers office a ring and hop in his box, no need for a cremation either, where that evil old bastard is headed is plenty hot enough to do the job free for eternity.
Not even when it is free, will I read the Telegraph.
Regrettably, the Telegraph outsells the SMH 10:1 in many rural areas. Most rural cafes have the Telegraph on hand for their customers. I asked a few cafe owners why and they replied it was the format – the SMH was, until recently broadsheet, and thus, more difficult to read at a small table. Despite the change to the smaller format, the pattern was set. And, almost all regional news outlets are Murdoch owned.