Andrew Bolt Reckons News Corp’s Climate Change Campaign Is “Rubbish”
"This is what I think: it's rubbish."
Just one day after News Corp made headlines for announcing a shocking climate change campaign, Sky News host Andrew Bolt has called the move “rubbish”.
“Millions of Australian readers would have got a shock this morning when they picked up their Murdoch newspapers around the country,” Bolt told his audience on Sky News’ The Bolt Report, effectively biting the climate change-denying hand that feeds him.
“Prime Minister Scott Morrison will actually be delighted because he can now have the Malcolm Turnbull-type policy that he wants – net zero emissions – and take it to the next big global warming conference in Glasgow in November, knowing that he has the backing of the Murdoch media.”
For those unfamiliar, News Corp finally decided to address climate change this week in a campaign that can only be described as complete and utter greenwashing from the news organisation perhaps most complicit in the spread of climate misinformation.
The content series — which is developed in partnership with the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub — is the first time the Murdoch press has addressed the genuine impact climate change will have on Australia by 2050.
However, the campaign means very little when News Corp Australia continues to amplify the voices of such prominent climate change deniers like Andrew Bolt, Peta Credlin, and Alan Jones.
News Corp Australia’s hypocrisy is evident in the fact that it has failed to remove any of its climate change denial content, and continued to publish this message as recently as last week.
However, allowing Bolt to continue his climate change denial rhetoric whilst claiming the company genuinely cares to address the impending threat of climate change is particularly ironic.
“I’m still free to say exactly what I think,” Bolt said in the clip, which is still live on the Sky News YouTube channel.
“This is what I think: it’s rubbish. I don’t buy it. Not the arguments here, anyway.”
While it’s all well and good that News Corp Australia still “believes in debate” — as Bolt put it — allowing some of their most prominent voices to directly undermine their own climate action campaign speaks volumes about what the Murdoch media organisation actually stands for.