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Climate denial, obstruction, and hypocrisy define Rupert Murdoch’s legacy

Special Programs Climate & Energy

Written by Allison Fisher, John Knefel & Sophie Lawton

Published

On September 21, Rupert Murdoch announced his retirement from Fox Corp. and News Corp. Given the unparalleled global scale of his media footprint, there is perhaps no one on the planet who has done more to spread dangerous climate change misinformation and undermine efforts to address the crisis than Rupert Murdoch. And while Murdoch's properties around the globe attacked and obstructed climate action for decades — the media mogul took steps to shield his corporation from climate risks. 

  • Murdoch's media footprint includes hundreds of local, national, and international media outlets around the globe

    • Aside from Murdoch’s flagship news properties in the U.S., News Corp. holdings include three national newspapers in the U.K and almost 150 publications in Australia. [Voice of America News, 7/13/11]
    • Murdoch’s media properties in Australia control “about 70% of the nation's print circulation,” which prompted a former prime minister to call “for an inquiry into Rupert Murdoch's media dominance in Australia.” [BBC, 10/12/20]
    • News Corp. Australia has been widely criticized for pushing climate denial and misinformation while attacking climate action:
      • During the particularly devastating 2020 wildfires, News Corp. refused to acknowledge the role of climate change in the acceleration of the fires. One Sky News host even claimed “there is no doubt ... that two decades-plus of climate change activism is making them worse.” Another called the “big global warming scare” a “con.” [Media Matters, 1/6/20]
      • In the lead up to elections and during the 2019-2020 wildfire season, News Corp.’s coverage of climate change included denial and conspiracy theories. An employee of the company sent an email condemning the coverage as “misinformation” and “contributing to the spread of climate change denial and lies.” The senior News Corp. employee accused the company “of misrepresenting facts and spreading misinformation to focus on arson as the cause of the bushfires, rather than climate change.” [Tribune, 5/18/22; The Guardian, 1/9/20]
      • A study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue described News Corp.’s Sky News Australia as a “content hub” for climate change denialism. The study showed that during the U.N. climate summit in 2021, some of the most engaged-with social media content related to climate change “could be traced back to Sky News Australia, and was regularly used as a source citation among some of the world’s loudest climate deniers as well as other, more rogue ultra-right-wing provocateurs.”  [Vice, 6/14/22]
      • Australia’s media watchdog, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, found that Sky News’ Outsiders program had violated broadcast codes of practices, claiming the show contained false information about climate change and COVID-19. The chair of the media watchdog group claimed Outsiders “did not present news content either accurately or fairly." Some examples of climate change misinformation from the program included falsely claiming the Great Barrier Reef is not at risk from climate change, falsely claiming the British government was forcing citizens to get rid of gas heaters, and one host stating, “Clearly if the planet was warming to the dire extent that we are being told, it would show up in the data, wouldn’t it?” after presenting a misleading subset of data from cities in Japan. [Barrons, 4/27/23; The Klaxon, 4/26/23]
    • The BBC reported in 2010 on how Murdoch had consolidated his media holdings in the United Kingdom after an “unprecedented” merger was allowed to go through “in three days.” According to the BBC, “Margaret Thatcher's government allowed Mr Murdoch's company to take over The Times and Sunday Times without referring it to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC), even though he already owned the Sun and the News of the World.” Harold Evans, former editor of the Sunday Times, described the merger as one “unprecedented in history.” [BBC, 12/22/10]
    • Like News Corp. Australia, Murdoch’s U.K. publications have also pushed climate denial and misinformation while attacking climate action:
      • The Sun claimed recent U.K. climate policies are “steered not by reason and ­evidence but by hysterical fanatics who wilfully misread and exaggerate environment science to justify their wild predictions of imminent apocalypse.” The tabloid referred to such “fanatics” as “agents of Labour and its agenda.” [The Sun, 6/5/23]
      • Another column by The Sun staff claimed that banning oil drilling is “dangerous, delusional nonsense” and that it would “leave us at the whims of foreign powers.” The column also claimed solar and wind energy cannot power the country. The tabloid made similar claims in a March 2023 column, declaring, “There’s a lesson here too for eco warriors still trotting out their lazy delusion that renewables such as wind and solar can alone power Britain.” Wind power is currently the largest producer of electricity for the U.K. [The Sun, 5/29/23, 3/23/23]
      • In 2022, an opinion column by The Sun staff complained that “eco propagandists, NIMBYs and gutless politicians” destroyed the possibility of Britain having a “thriving shale industry, potentially supplying cheap UK gas for decades and creating thousands of jobs.” The column went on to scold climate activists for protesting Britain’s contributions to climate change while China is the largest producer of CO2 emissions. [The Sun, 11/8/22]
      • The Sun recently participated in a smear campaign against an Extinction Rebellion activist, calling her an “eco-hypocrite” for buying groceries sourced from other countries and driving a car that uses diesel fuel. [The Sun, 4/20/23]

  • Murdoch’s U.S. news outlets have mainstreamed climate disinformation for decades

    • Fox News has been pushing climate denial for decades. In 2005, then-Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume attacked the credibility of a World Bank scientist in order to discredit a recent United Nations climate change report written by a panel the scientist co-chaired. [Media Matters, 3/31/05]
    • In 2010, leaked emails showed that top Fox official Bill Sammon issued a network-wide directive ordering his staff to cast doubt on climate science. The emails, sent during the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, questioned the “veracity of climate change data” and ordered the network's journalists to “refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question.” [Media Matters, 12/15/10]
    • Even as the evidence of climate change continues to strengthen with increasingly deadly extreme weather events, Fox climate denial continues unabated. Fox News minimized the role climate change played in the Lahaina wildfires, with figures like Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway asserting there is a “climate change agenda” to “control the economy.” [Fox News, The Big Weekend Show, 8/27/23]
    • Fox also continues to provide a platform for climate deniers without disclosing their industry ties. Fox’s newest prime-time darling Jesse Watters hosted Judith Curry, a disgraced climate contrarian and the co-founder of a private consulting company funded in part by oil industry groups. During the prime-time segment, Watters failed to mention Curry’s ties to the fossil fuel industry, as well as her history of testifying on behalf of Republican members of congress to deny the importance of climate action. [Media Matters, 8/30/23]
    • Fox News also has a long history of attacking and obstructing action on climate. Immediately after Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth premiered in 2006, Fox News hosted Sterling Burnett, a fellow at the ExxonMobil-funded National Center for Policy Analysis, who said of the movie, “Why go see propaganda? You don't go see Joseph Goebbels' films to see the truth about Nazi Germany. You don't go see Al Gore's films to see the truth about global warming.” [Think Progress, 5/23/06; The New York Times, 5/23/06]
    • Fox News spent 2008 and 2009 doing everything possible to prevent the Senate from passing a cap and trade bill. In 2009 alone, Glenn Beck and his colleagues at Fox misrepresented a Treasury Department memo to claim that the cap and trade bill passed by the House could cost American households an extra “1,761 bucks a year in taxes.” Fox & Friends' Brian Kilmeade suggested it could “double the unemployment numbers.” In fact, a 2009 Congressional Budget Office analysis estimated that the net impact to households from the bill in 2020 would range between a benefit of $40 per year and a cost of $340 per year, for an average cost of $165 per year. The same report concluded total employment would be “only modestly affected” by cap-and-trade, a change that is “small compared with the normal rate of job turnover in the economy.” [Media Matters, 9/17/09, 6/26/09, 6/23/09]
    • Fox News continues to attack the Biden administration's efforts to address global warming. The network has consistently criticized Biden’s tax credits for electric vehicles.
      • Fox News host Steve Doocy: “To your point about the tax credit, if you buy a $75,000 electric car? Who pays for that? The taxpayers. All the taxpayers. Every taxpayer pays for that subsidy that the rich people or affluent people, who can afford $75,000, are paying for a car. Does that seem fair?” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/8/22]
      • Fox Business host Dagen McDowell: “$369 billion spent on climate and energy programs. So more incentives for rich folks to buy electric vehicles.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 8/8/22]
      • Fox News contributor Brian Brenberg: “The president of the United States is leading a charge to send tax credits to wealthy people to buy electric vehicles. The gap between what is needed and what people — and what they’re getting from the Congress has never been wider, Steve, on the economy. That's why people have lost hope. That's why they feel so pessimistic. Because D.C. doesn't get it.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/8/22]
    • Fox has also ginned up ridiculous controversies to mischaracterize real attempts to address climate change, including by manufacturing a so-called “war on appliances.” Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe argued that appliance standards are “a middle finger to Americans,” claiming that the government is “going to invade your home, take away your gas stoves, your dishwasher, we own you. I mean that’s basically the message they’re trying to send. Because I mean this isn't about the climate. … The objective actually isn't to reduce emissions, it's not to reduce temperatures, it's not to do any of these things. The objective is societal control. And climate is a means to accomplish that goal.” [Fox News, The Big Sunday Show, 5/7/23]
    • Like Fox News, Murdoch’s print media in the U.S. — The Wall Street Journal and New York Post — have a legacy of climate misinformation:
      • For decades, The Wall Street Journal editorial page has published op-eds and editorials denying the scientific consensus on climate change, overstating the cost of taking action, and making claims that politics, not science, motivate those concerned about the climate. [Media Matters, 8/2/12; The Guardian 5/28/14]
      • The Wall Street Journal and New York Post opinion pages provide a platform for climate deniers and skeptics to peddle misinformation, especially during major climate moments. In the lead-up to global climate negotiations in 2021, climate skeptic Bjorn Lomborg ran a series of op-eds for the Journal. In his September 16 op-ed titled “Climate Change Saves More Lives Than You’d Think,” Lomborg misleadingly claimed that “global warming now prevents more than 166,000 temperature-related fatalities annually.” Lomborg peddled this same idea in an article for the New York Post and on an edition of Fox News’ The Journal Editorial Report.” [Media Matters, 10/20/21]  
      • New York Post columnist Miranda Devine regularly pushes climate misinformation and uses her column to attack climate advocates. On Earth Day 2020, she published a piece titled “Celebrity climate activists cheer coronavirus misery in name of environment,” in which she wrote, “The pandemic has been a dream come true for climate alarmists.” During the Canadian Wildfire smoke event that severely impacted the air quality in New York and other U.S. cities, Devine wrote an article titled, “Smoky New York isn’t climate change — it’s bad forest management,” which was cited by Fox News personalities and amplified by right-wing media figures online.” [New York Post, 4/22/20; Media Matters, 6/9/23]
      • As the planet experienced deadly heat waves, floods, and wildfires during the summer of 2023 — which included the hottest month on record so far — Wall Street Journal editorial board member Allysia Finley wrote a column claiming that media coverage of climate change constituted a “mental disorder.” [Axios, 8/2/23; Media Matters, 8/1/23]

  • Rupert Murdoch made conspicuous public commitments to climate action while his media properties spewed climate denial and attacked climate advocates

    • Murdoch took steps to shield his companies from climate risks. In 2007, Murdoch declared that “climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats” in a speech announcing News Corp.'s new climate initiative to achieve carbon neutrality. He continued, “We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can't afford the risk of inaction.” [Media Matters, 4/21/11]
    • As Vice reported in 2021, News Corp. “spent the past 15 years mitigating its own climate risk while giving media outlets like Fox News carte blanche to deny climate change altogether.” Vice reviewed hundreds of publicly available documents and found that News Corp. “meticulously documented its own carbon footprint since 2006 and sought to ‘take a leadership role on the issue of climate change’ by reducing it.” [Vice, 9/23/21]
    • While Murdoch addressed the carbon footprint of his corporation, his outlets attacked those trying to pass climate policy. According to Vice, “Papers such as the Australian, the country’s equivalent of the New York Times, ran high-profile pieces attacking [Australian Prime Minister Kevin] Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, an attempt to force companies to pay for the climate-warming carbon they release into the atmosphere. … And it worked: Australian Parliament eventually voted against Rudd’s carbon-reduction effort, his public opinion rating tanked, his own Labor Party led a coup against him, and he resigned in 2010.” [Vice, 9/23/21]
    • A study by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2012 noted that “in 2007, News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch claimed coverage of climate change in his media outlets — which include Fox News Channel and the Wall Street Journal opinion pages — would improve over time.” But based on the analysis of coverage, it had not. [Union of Concerned Scientists, 9/21/23]
    • In a 2015 tweet, Rupert Murdoch claimed he was a “climate change skeptic not a denier.” [Time, 1/15/20]
    • Ahead of the U.N.’s COP26 international climate talks in 2021, Murdoch’s media conglomerate News Corp. launched Mission Zero, an editorial campaign in Australia aimed at promoting a net-zero future: The campaign was derided by some of News Corp.’s most prominent Australian employees, including climate-denying Sky News Australia anchor Andrew Bolt, who called it “rubbish” and continued doing climate denial segments in the weeks leading up to the campaign. [Media Matters, 10/20/12]
    • At the same time the Mission Zero campaign was running in Australia, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal were pushing climate disinformation in the U.S. [Media Matters, 10/20/12] 
    • Murdoch’s son James has repeatedly spoken out against his father’s media outlets’ climate denial. When climate scientists linked the deadly bushfires in Australia to global warming, Murdoch-owned newspapers criticized such claims, describing them as “silly” and “hysterical.” James Murdoch and his wife issued a joint statement expressing their frustration with News Corp.’s and Fox News’ coverage of the fires. [Time, 1/15/20]