Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has ripped into News Corp for its coverage of climate change, describing its reporting as “horrifically biased” and “destructive”.
In a fiery exchange on Q&A last night, Mr Turnbull clashed with Paul Kelly, a journalist and the Editor-at-Large for News Corp publication, The Australian.
“The campaign on climate denial is just staggering and has done enormous damage to the world, to the global need to address global warming,” Mr Turnbull said.
“I mean, it is so horrifically biased and such propaganda that Rupert’s own son James can’t stomach it.”
Mr Kelly responded by defending News Corp’s coverage and arguing that there are “many publications” within the business that promote “radical action on climate change.”
“It’s okay to be a propagandist for one side but if one is a critic or sceptic, that’s not okay?,” Mr Kelly asked the former prime minister.
“What you’ve just described is the fundamental problem,” Turnbull replied.
“That the company you work for, it’s friends in politics, Trump and others, have turned this issue of physics into an issue of ideas or identity.”
Rupert Murdoch, founder and chairman of News Corp, has copped widespread criticism for how his publications have treated the pressing issue of climate change.
His son, James Murdoch revealed his "frustration" with News Corp's Australian climate change coverage in January, pointing to the "ongoing denial" of global warming during the bushfire emergency.
A widely-shared article by The Australian detailing the number of people charged with arson since the beginning of the fire season for including a number of inaccuracies.
However, Mr Murdoch has rejected claims that News Corp promotes climate change denial.
"There are no change climate change deniers around, I can assure you," he said at the company's annual general meeting in New York in December last year.
On Q&A, Mr Turnbull accused the Murdoch media of delaying action on climate change and said countries like Australia and the United States were “paying the price”.
“We had 12 million hectares of our country burnt last summer and your newspapers were saying it was all the consequences of some arsonists,” Mr Turnbull said.
“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.”
Mr Kelly reacted angrily to Mr Turnbull’s comments.
“How dare you! How dare you start telling me what I should do in terms of my career and lecture me about what moral position I should take. How dare you do it.”
Mr Turnbull’s comments received loud applause from the studio audience as he accused News Corp of causing “enormous damage to Western democracy.”
“I think you exaggerate the impact we have,” Mr Kelly said, denying claims that News Corp had swayed the last federal election in the Coalition’s favour.
Mr Kelly claimed the former prime minister’s attack on News Corp was misdirected and that he’d failed to manage the right-wing faction of the Liberal party, resulting in the 2018 leadership spill.
“Now, I understand you being upset about our company. But essentially, what you’re doing is you’re transferring your own political failures and wishing to blame our company for them,” Mr Kelly said.
The former prime minister challenged Mr Kelly and other News Corp employees to “speak up and say publicly what they say privately.”
“Speak up and do what James Murdoch had the courage to do and clearly, too many of the employees do not.”
More than 500,000 Australian signed an online petition calling for a royal commission into the concentration of media ownership in Australia since its October launch, and the petition was tabled in parliament on Monday.
Mr Turnbull has publicly supported the petition, which was kickstarted by former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd.
“I’m not normally a fan of royal commissions. However, I do think there is a profound problem with the way Murdoch media in particular and media, in general, is operating at the moment,” Mr Turnbull said on Insiders on Sunday.
"We have to work out what price we're paying, as a society, for the hyper-partisanship of the media.”
