On the eve of the release of the fifth assessment report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, major Australian news outlets spread misinformation and rehash debunked conspiracy theories.

On the eve of the release of the fifth assessment report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, major Australian news outlets spread misinformation and rehash debunked conspiracy theories.

In one case, a headline by Murdoch-owned The Australian was so distorted and the denialism so blatant that it was forced to issue a correction. Serious current affairs ABC program, 7:30, repeated tired and disproven conspiracy theories about 'Climategate' in a story about the IPCC report.

Rather than focus on the serious message from the report — that we now have "slam dunk evidence that burning fossil fuels is the cause of most of the temperature increases of recent decades, and warn that sea levels could rise by almost three feet by the end of the century if we don't change our ways" — the ABC decided to focus on "calls" by "some scientists" to reform the UN panel and a years-old debunked story on "Climategate". 7:30 program reporter Hayden Cooper decided on Thursday night to focus on "Climategate":

"The credibility of the organisation has been challenged during the past decade. London-based author and journalist Fred Pearce covered what became known as "Climategate", the leaking of emails from scientists at the University of East Anglia, which raised questions about honesty behind the scenes."

There is no mention in this story of the facts about the leaked emails, and Cooper simply repeats the discredited accusations against now vindicated climate scientists.

Obviously, the news values of major news outlets in Australia focus on conflict, scandal and controversy. There is no news values in a story about the cause and dire risks of climate change. We've known for decades that our planet is warming and that temperature increases are primarily caused by human activity. It's old news, so the IPCC report has no news values.

So news outlets, like The Australian, focus on manufactured scandals and climate change denialism. The Australian is enormously influential, particularly in shaping how other media outlets cover stories.

For several years now, papers from the Murdoch-owned News Corp, such as The Australian and the Wallstreet Journal, have had an unspoken editorial policy to heighten reporting on scientific uncertainty involving climate change, promote misleading or non-credible spokespeople, disparage climate scientists or climate science, and, most recently, cherry pick facts, according to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (pdf link).

The Crikey website reported a year ago that a study by Australian academic Robert Mann "found The Australian contained a high number of articles from those who denied the science of climate change, while commentary from those who had been published in academic journals on climate science was rare."

It is unsurprising, but disappointing, that the focus of the ABC's 7:30 program story on the IPCC report focused on Climategate, rather than the more serious and pertinent story.

The results of this journalistic and editorial posture is now evident through the words and actions of the new Australian government. For the past three years, The Australian has cheered at the demonisation campaign waged by now-prime minister Tony Abbott against climate action and the chief mitigation policy of carbon pricing.

One of the first acts of the Abbott government was to announce the disbanding of the Australian Climate Commission. The commission's role was to provide independent information to the public about climate science, and the international action being taken to reduce carbon emissions.

The Abbott government has declared that it will introduce legislation to abolish the carbon price at the next sitting of the parliament.

These decisions by Mr Abbott make headlines in Australia, not because of the gross moral negligence of attempting to hurl Australian down a path to become a fossil-fuel dependent nation with no climate change policy, but instead because the abolished Climate Commission relaunched as a non-profit in, as reported by the AAP, "defiance" of Abbott.

The news values are there. Conflict, scandal and controversy. The deadly serious issue of Australia's climate policy and of the impact of global warming barely rates a mention.

If you are interested in what the IPCC report says, the Guardian has some excellent coverage. And if you want specific Australian analysis, I do recommend you visit the Climate Institute's dedicated page.