Denial Watch: The Media Trail of Denial

This is an interesting article on how a piece of disinfomation - the misreporting of a press release about the impact of the ozone layer on sea ice, gets turned into a denial news report in one of Rupert Murdoch's outlets and then recycled by the others building the spin into news;

First we have yet another entry in The Australian’s (owned by Murdoch’s News Corp) continuing war on science (well-documented by Tim Lambert). It conflates two well-trod phenomena in the Antarctic (slight upward trend in recent sea ice, not all of the continent is uniformly warming as much as the western peninsula) to further the impression that Antarctica is somehow evidence against anthropogenic warming and resulting climatic change. As one can see at Lambert’s Deltoid site, for The Australian to engage in misdirection on climate change is not in and of itself exactly “news”.

However, the story is then picked up by another Murdoch/News Corp Ozzie outlet, News.com.au, giving it legs beyond the usual Australian idiocy. The story really catches fire, though, when it is further trumpeted by Murdoch/News Corp’s US media centerpiece, Fox News. From there it travels through the usual far right denialosphere outlets, such as Glenn “Mad Max” Beck, and on into Greater Wingnuttia.

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