The methane disinformation campaign
Groundswell promoted disinformation about the role of methane in climate change, then spent $140,000 to influence the outcome of the election
At the end of last year I recieved a grant from the Bruce Jesson Foundation to write a short series of articles about climate change disinformation. The second article in that series was published today by The Spinoff you can read it here. I look at how Groundswell spread disinformation on the role methane emissions play in climate change. I’ll also be talking about this in the Climate Disinfo Night School run by Tohatoha starting at the end of this month.
As many of you know I’ve returned to full time study this year and am persuing an advanced degree in media and communications. Today while working on an assignment that involved conducting "secondary research to investigate the work applications and types of careers that are associated in your discipline." I came accross this dismal piece of career advice, from ‘Career In Mass Communication’ by Manohar Puri (published 2006)
That was the case in 2006, and today the situation is hardly better. Globally media outlets are laying off staff or shuting shop altogether. Locally, one of New Zealand’s two major TV newsrooms is closing down in June and the other is making significant cuts. It’s a terribly stupid time to be pursuing a journalism career, but there’s a need for investigating disinformation like the campaign I’ve written about in the article above. Consider taking out a paid subscription to Feijoa Dispatch to help sustain this kind of work.
This coalition has resuscitated some zombie projects and people we had thought were dead and buried. This is bloody scary, i feel sorry for the farmers fed this toxic BS by media utterly dependent on ag industry farming. This crap information just leads to them putting off the really important decisions to make changes, putting off the inevitable. They think people like me are their enemies when in reality its the likes of the farming show that will do much more harm on a planet teetering on ecological collapse