Ex-Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull Shreds Murdoch Media Empire for Climate Change ‘Idiocy’ — To News Corp Editor’s Face

Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull recently had an intense clash with the editor of a conservative-leaning newspaper who he accused of carrying out Rupert Murdoch’s anti-climate change agenda.

Turnbull and The Australian editor-at-large Paul Kelly appeared together on the talk show Q+A, during which the two clashed over the media’s role in covering climate science.

Kelly took issue with what he considers to be news outlets serving as “propagandist” for “radical action on climate change.”

The Australian is owned by News Corp, and Turnbull locked onto that fact as he blasted the Murdoch media empire for the negative editorial approach it often takes on global warming and climate change.

“The company you work for and its friends in politics like [President Donald] Trump and others have turned this issue of physics into an issue of values or identity,” Turnbull said. “Saying you believe or disbelieve in global warming is like saying you believe or disbelieve in gravity. You’ve turned something that should be a question of engineering and economics into undiluted ideology and idiocy, and we are paying the price in delayed action.”

Turnbull went on by saying Murdoch and News Corp deserve much of the blame for climate change denialism, and they have done “enormous damage to western democracy.” He also recalled how Murdoch-owned news outlets were accused of pushing climate disinformation earlier in the year while Australia was being ravaged by wildfires.

We had 12 million of hectares of our country burnt last summer and your newspapers were saying it was all the consequence of some arsonists, and James Murdoch was so disgusted, he disassociated himself from the family business. What does that tell you? How offensive, how biased, how destructive does it have to be, Paul, before you will say ‘it’s enough, I’m out of it?’

Kelly shot back by telling Turnbull “how dare you [lecture me],” to which Turnbull said “it’s about time” for people in Murdoch’s world to speak up and stand against this.

Watch above, via The Guardian.