The corporate domination of the news media is a familiar catch-cry of all manner of groups and social movements who feel they are not adequately represented in the news. This type of influence is quite hard to pin down. Examples of direct intervention by advertisers or corporate owners, while by no means unheard of, are not widespread or systematic to the extent that they can account for overall patterns of news coverage. By most accounts influence operates at a more subtle level, in the form of self-censorship by journalists and the accepted occupational norms of what counts as ‘news’ and how it should be communicated. Most news media are now components of larger corporations, and depend on advertisers for the vast majority of their income. Even if these groups don’t directly interfere in the news, it is clearly in the ultimate interests of news media not to piss them off too much.
Recent scuffles in the New Zealand media over proposed Emissions Trading legislation provide and interesting example. The proposed scheme has been attracting a lot of negative attention in recent days. First the government pushed back by two years the time when the transport sector would be covered by the ETS, over concerns the fuel price rise would annoy voters be a burden on hard working families. Then it was the turn of the business lobby, with Rio Tinto threatening to close down its Tiwai Point aluminium smelter and the forestry sector warning of hundreds of millions of dollars in losses if the ETS went ahead.
Most media coverage seems to have been overwhelmingly sympathetic to the business case. Possibilities of massive job losses and huge harm to the New Zealand economy if the ETS went head were splashed across TV and newspaper reports. Seemingly in awe of the high-ranking Rio Tinto executives flown in to put their case to the select committee, the major news media did not offer any competing claims to those made by the corporates. Nowhere was it mentioned the cost to the economy – never mind the planet – if we don’t act to reduce our emissions (Climate Change minister David Parker finally, on Thursday, mentioned a figure of $1.5 billion to the economy, though this, as yet, hasn’t made it onto TV).
The only outlet I’m aware of that questioned Rio Tinto’s claims was, of all places, Radio NZ National’s Afternoons with Jim Mora [mp3]. Panellist Ben Thomas of the NBR offered a ‘back-of-the-envelope calculation’ of the actual costs to the smelter of the ETS. He estimated that the increase in electricity costs due to the ETS would only affect 10% of the smelter’s total electricity. With electricity prices set to rise by about 8%, this would mean a 0.8% increase in the smelter’s electricity costs – somewhere in the region of $2-5 million a year, set against an annual profit of around $130 million. Further casting doubt on Rio Tinto’s claims is that fact that they signed a long-term electricity deal with Meridian two weeks after the details of the ETS were announced.
None of this, of course, made it onto TV news. I’m not saying the claims made by Rio Tinto and other business groups are unfounded, but it’s the sheer lack of competing voices that is worrying when there is clearly another side to this. Much criticism was directed at the news media for its coverage of the climate change “debate,” with equal weight being given to climate skeptics despite them being in the minority of scientific opinion. This overuse of journalistic ‘balance’ seems to have given way to one-sided reporting – and in both cases it is business interests who come out better off.
The ETS doesn’t seem to be nearly as “controversial” as Simon Dallow would have you believe – a recent survey, also presented to the select committee, found that 60% of businesses supported the ETS, 71% thought that large emitters should pay, and 77% of business decision makers thought that climate change should be dealt with now or urgently (numbers were similar for the general public). This didn’t stop TV3’s Duncan Garner graphically comparing the scheme to a “boxer on the ropes – it is bleeding, but not yet knocked out” and saying the government was “vulnerable” on the issue. Duncan obviously knows more about the political process than I do, but most indications I’ve seen suggest that the ETS is likely to be passed into law before the election.
This situation is not exactly unique, with business groups vehemently opposing all kinds of environmental measures on the grounds they will be bad for the economy. This illuminating post on Grist demonstrates that not only do businesses wildly overestimate the costs of environmental measures, so too do the government agencies that promote them. The news media don’t have a good track record here either, having been found in many studies to consistently slant environmental coverage in favour of business and under- or mis-report environmental problems. Is it a coincidence that the one major media outlet to offer an alternative perspective was a public broadcaster? One example doesn’t in itself prove much, but the overall picture isn’t encouraging.
