More Green Lies paid for by YOUR TAXES

Greenery is shrouding debate
By Michael Duffy
March 20 2005
Sydney Morning Herald

Green propaganda is now so pervasive in the media and public debate it has become part of the cultural background. Extraordinary errors and misrepresentations, on subjects such as global warming and native vegetation clearing, are regularly published without comment. Here's a story about just how hard it is to defend the truth against the Green spirit of our times.

On February 16, 2004 ABC TV's Four Corners aired a program about the Tasmanian timber industry. It is possibly the most biased Australian television program ever put to air. Called Lords of the Forest, its faults included a map that dramatically under-represented the amount of forest preserved in Tasmania, unsubstantiated allegations of criminal activity, the smearing of pro-logging speakers who appeared on the program, and emotive language. This included the following phrases: mushroom clouds, scorched-earth policy, an aggressive forest policy, a voracious appetite for timber, overwhelming devastation, absolute assault on the landscape and the senses, and corruption and cronyism.

Timber pays the wages of about 10,000 people in Tasmania. Many of them, their families and their supporters were appalled that the ABC could produce a program that treated their way of life with such contempt. But that was only the beginning.

Timber Communities Australia (TCA) is a volunteer organisation with a professional secretariat funded by the industry. It complained to the ABC about Lords of the Forests. Following an internal review, Geoffrey Crawford, director of corporate affairs, told TCA the corporation "cannot agree with your view that the program was unfair and impartial". All it would concede was that the map had been "oversimplified" and two other, minor, errors of fact. The ABC put a corrected map on its website but refused a request from TCA to correct any errors on air.

TCA and Forestry Tasmania, the state agency that manages public forests, then appealed to the Independent Complaints Review Tribunal. In stark contrast to the ABC's internal review, this one found, last December, "instances of serious bias, lack of balance and unfair treatment [the program] frequently casts doubt on the credibility of the 'Lords' and their supporters, but scarcely ever subjects their opponents to the same treatment". A complaint about the map was also upheld by the Australian Broadcasting Authority, which found last month that the program had breached the ABC code of practice and had "failed to present factual material accurately".

TCA again asked the ABC for an on-air correction, and was again refused. Apart from a short press release, the ABC did nothing in response to the independent findings. Its response can be compared with that of the British Broadcasting Corporation, which in 2002 also broadcast a biased and ignorant attack on the Tasmanian timber industry. In that case Britain's Broadcasting Standards Commission not only found against the program, it was able to order the BBC to run a summary of its finding on air after each of four subsequent programs, and publish a half-page summary near the front of The Times newspaper on June 2, 2003.

Strange to relate, while the Australian inquiries were under way, Lords of the Forest was one of a group of three programs from Four Corners that won the prestigious 2004 Australian Government Peter Hunt Eureka Prize of $10,000 for outstanding science communication.

Following the damning findings of the two independent review organisations, last month TCA asked the Australian Museum, which administers the prizes, to have the decision reconsidered. The judges met and decided not to withdraw the prize, saying in a written statement that the factual inaccuracies upheld by the Independent Complaints Review Tribunal (including the map) were "relatively minor" and they did not believe the wording used in the program was unusually emotive.

This decision was supported in letters to Barry Chipman, Tasmanian state co-ordinator of TCA, by the museum's director Frank Howarth, and Brian Sherman, the president of the museum trust. Sherman wrote that "your suggestion that the museum overturn the reconsidered decision of a judging panel would, I believe, compromise the independence of the judging process and not be in the best interest of the integrity of the Australian Museum Eureka Prizes".

Following the ABA finding last month, Senator Ian Campbell, the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, intervened. He said he "was concerned that this prestigious award, sponsored by my department, has been given to a story that might not have met the highest standards of journalism". After writing to Sherman about the affair, Campbell added a member to the panel of judges: Professor Bob Carter, of James Cook University, an environmental scientist specialising in climate change. Campbell also demanded to see the criteria used for awarding the prize.

In December, Gunns Limited, the big Tasmanian timber company, launched a writ against 20 environmental activists and organisations - an action widely supported by the 10,000 people who live off timber, and their families and their union. To find the motivation behind the writ you need look no further than the frustration and bitterness created by years of media bias, typified by Lords of the Forest. The Tasmanians feel they have been betrayed by revered national institutions such as the ABC and the Australian Museum.

Anyone concerned by the left's domination of cultural institutions in this country will be further depressed by the sad example of this program, the cover-up afterwards, and the lack of interest in the whole sordid affair from the media.


Copyright © 2005
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