Consultant Dan
21 July 2011
Murdoch Bingo and the carbon price debate
The Murdoch media in Australia is running a dishonest campaign against a carbon price and the Clean Energy Future package.
The Australian, which is the Murdoch family’s most beloved newspaper in this country, has declared that it will destroy the Australian Greens. It frequently turns press releases from the coal lobby into front page stories. It runs anti-environmental and anti-renewables articles which are so crazy that they belong on silly blogs, not a serious national broadsheet.
Yesterday, for example, the Australian ran an opinion piece from Ziggy Switkowski, who explains
Carbon dioxide, which is produced in great quantities also, but is colourless and normally benign, is not a pollutant.
This has long been a key argument of climate denialists. It was repeated on Tuesday during the National Press Club Debate, by the world’s leading climate denialist, Lord Monckton.
The Australian and Ziggy rammed home their assault against climate science in terms more shrill even than Monckton himself:
Is my granddaughter an environmental vandal because she “contaminates” eight nappies a day destined for landfill. Who dares call babies polluters?
I believe that this intellectual ‘hacking’ of the national conversation, is the key to the Murdoch scandal in Australia.
Murdoch Bingo
Like thousands of Australians, I sat up on Tuesday night to watch Rupert and James Murdoch give testimony to a Committee of the UK House of Commons.
The situation is serious so I decided to lighten up our late night (we watched until 3am), by preparing a sheet for playing ‘Murdoch Bingo’. It went off and I have no idea how many people used it.
I posted it on my Sribd folder, where more than 3000 people downloaded it.
Margaret Simons posted it on her blog, Content Makers.
Inpress Magazine posted it on Twitpic, where almost 27,000 people viewed it and over 1000 RTd the Tweet. It trended within the hashtag stream for #hackgate.
Here are some of the comments from UK blogs:
Bugger that, I’ve nealy got a line on the bingo card
says Zippy
Also this bingo card is brilliant.
says rosalafae
In the mean time, let’s sit back, play Rupert Murdoch bingo (made by excellent Inpressmag) and watch the structures collapse. As ever, we are optimistic.
says flashbank
Thanks @Anonymous.
I hope we all get to see some good come out of this.
RSS
Murdoch bingo was excellent and just goes to show how predictable the ‘spin’ can be. Well done Dan.