The Australian, Rupert Murdoch’s flagship newspaper, has defended itself against criticism it downplayed unprecedented bushfires by failing to put a picture of the disaster on the front page of an edition, even as newspapers across the world featured the harrowing scenes.

Many of the world’s leading mastheads featured pictures of the devastation of the Australian bushfires on page one on Thursday. But the Australian’s first edition ran an upbeat picture story about the New Year’s Day picnic races at Hanging Rock.

Sources at the newspaper said the newsroom was short-staffed over the holidays, however it was noted that resources were found to attack the ABC with gusto over its New Year’s Eve concert.

Singer Tex Perkins has upset some ABC viewers after his obscene gesture directed at the PM during his Sydney New Year's Eve performance https://t.co/1hngOWcVyn — The Australian (@australian) January 1, 2020

“Our readers have been fully informed across the nation both online and in paper all week,” editor John Lehmann told Guardian Australia.

The national broadsheet’s lead story on Thursday was about a secret proposal by police to ban alcohol in Indigenous communities in Western Australia – a story deemed more important than the bushfire report, which said eight people were dead and mass evacuations were underway.

Police push for remote booze ban in WA’s north after 13 youth suicides put a spotlight on rampant alcohol abuse, child neglect and violence. This is really bold and opinion is not uniform ⁦@australian⁩ https://t.co/82oboEuqO8 — Paige Taylor (@paigeataylor) January 1, 2020

There wasn’t a single photo of the catastrophic bushfires until page 4.

Meanwhile here in Australia the Oz WA edition didn’t have a single bushfire pic until page 4. They went with a pictorial coverage of the picnic races at hanging rock in vic. https://t.co/tUVp7MARZl — Barrie Cassidy (@barriecassidy) January 2, 2020

Before readers got to that coverage, they were given an exclusive interview with “rebel marine scientist Peter Ridd” who has challenged reef scientists to test whether or not human actions have caused a collapse in the growth rate of corals on the Great Barrier Reef.

The later editions of the paper dropped the racing story and replaced it with photographs of bushfire victims surveying the damage.

The Australian is not the only Murdoch-owned newspaper that has been accused of downplaying the bushfires.

On New Year’s Eve, Melbourne’s the Herald Sun also relegated the bushfires to page 4, even as thousands of Victorians faced a serious bushfire threat.

For the past 62 years our own "Onion Oracle" Halwyn Hermann has been predicting rainfall using a humble onion, and this year we all hope he's spot on, because he says rain is a coming https://t.co/y5hG7LZoQf — The Courier-Mail (@couriermail) January 1, 2020

On the same day, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph blamed the Bureau of Meteorology for inaccurate weather predictions, which may have “lulled residents into a false sense of security about conditions”.

But it was the Courier Mail’s story about the “Onion Oracle” that had some readers wondering what was going on at News Corp.

The Queensland tabloid carried the optimistic news that “Onion Oracle” Halwyn Hermann was predicting rain using an old German tradition. They even compared the Onion Oracle’s predictions to those of the bureau of meteorology.

uhhhh yeah sure man pic.twitter.com/WVXI4a2v0v — Alex Bruce-Smith (@alexbrucesmith) December 31, 2019

The Australian has been consistent on one front. Throughout the bushfire season it has kept up its coverage of climate denialism.

Before Christmas, the Australian attempted to smear Greg Mullins and his Emergency Leaders for Climate Action group as “largely a vehicle for Tim Flannery”. Flannery is a leading environmentalist and chief counsellor at the Climate Council.

The former fire and emergency chiefs from multiple states and territories say Australia is unprepared for worsening natural disasters from climate change and governments are putting lives at risk.

The Australian says they are a front for Flannery who is an “alarmist” for urging that coal-fired power stations be shut down.

On New Year’s Eve, the paper led with another “exclusive” report that pushed the line Australia should not speed up its response to global warming.

EXCLUSIVE | Energy Minister @AngusTaylorMP has warned "top-down" pressure from the UN to address climate change will fail and better technologies — not tougher ­government imposts — are needed to meet emissions-reduction targets. https://t.co/Ifz1nllItg — The Australian (@australian) December 30, 2019

Climate pressure was “doomed to fail”, wrote environment editor

Graham Lloyd about claims by the energy minister, Angus Taylor, who warned that “top-down” pressure from the UN to address climate change would fail.

As communities in Victoria and New South Wales faced devastating weather conditions on the weekend the Australian assured its readers that there was nothing unusual going on.

A double-page spread about the history of fires in Australia painted the national disaster as a run-of-the-mill crisis: “History of disasters shows there is nothing new about nation’s destructive blazes.”

“While there is no doubt these bushfires are bad and may get worse, fuelling more talk of the nation battling an unprecedented fire threat this summer, the blazes that continue to plague the eastern states and Western Australia are nothing new,” the report said.

“Climate change or no, these are some of the costs of being in one of the most fire-prone regions of the world. And those costs have been paid since well before Federation.”

“Indeed, of the entire list of official inquiries detailed in the AIDR’s bushfire and natural hazards database, just two make recommendations about factoring in climate change as part of the response to future fire risks.”