propaganda, the corporate information war against climate science, the ABC played an active and trust-building role. A role that is coming home to roost this election time.

ABC and climate coverage

Around the time of the NBN expose, Jeff Sparrow wrote an article in Eureka Street about political pressures on the ABC to go to extreme lengths of journalistic ‘balance’. Against a history of attacks from conservative politicians, funding cuts, and threats of more funding cuts, Sparrow says that the ABC was like “the victim in an abusive relationship, desperately trying to ward off the next blow by anticipating the criticism of its enemies”.

Sparrow says that airing an opposite view for every view expressed was the ABC’s main defense against political attacks.

In this context, after vocal climate skeptic Maurice Newmanbecame ABC chairperson, the ABC began airing climate denialist content. In 2007 it broadcast The Great Global Warming Swindle, a documentary discounting anthropogenic causes of global warming.

In 2010, when climate scientist James Hansen and climate denialist Christopher Monckton came to Australia, Hansen received scant attention from the ABC, with the exception of two radio interviews, including one on Late Night Live. In contrast, “Monckton received saturation coverage… and was always treated as an authoritative source until the Media Watch report near the end of his tour.”

Sparrow notes, “The ABC gave huge publicity to a man that most reputable scientists regard as a crank, even as it largely ignored one of the more influential scientists of our time [James Hansen].”

This can’t have been an honest mistake. In 2010, James