Australia’s Murdoch-owned tabloid newspapers – including The Daily Telegraph , Herald Sun and Courier Mail – have embarked on a bold new ...
Australia’s Murdoch-owned tabloid newspapers – including The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and Courier Mail – have embarked on a bold new climate change campaign.
This climate rebrand, dubbed “missionzero2050”, is billed by the company as “putting Australia on a path to a net-zero future”.
The change has surprised Australian media observers and, no doubt, media consumers given News Corp’s long-held climate denialist stance, which is well documented in public commentary and research.
So why is this happening now? And what does it mean?
What campaign says
Last Monday, News Corp’s tabloid mastheads began the new campaign with a 16-page wraparound supplement and a splashy online campaign championing the drive to cut climate-warming emissions by 2050.
News Corp must have done its climate communication research. It has assembled a collection of stories using best-practice climate communication techniques: telling a global story with a local face, visualising climate impacts and focusing on solutions, not creating fear.
Crucially, the campaign marks a change from News Corp’s long-held position on climate action. It is moved from calling decarbonisation too expensive and bad for jobs (it tagged the cost at $600 billion in 2015), to describing it now as a potential $2.1 trillion economic “windfall”, offering opportunities for 6,72,000 new jobs.
Climate denialism
What News Corp does matters because it has extensive influence in Australia’s media market.
The company’s newspaper, radio, pay TV and online news portfolio gives it a significant audience reach and huge political...
