This article examines a particular moment in journalism at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, with the aim of elucidating the link between public-sector journalism and political controversy in the recent Australian response to climate change. The particular moment in question involved the reporting of visits to Australia in early 2010 by two international commentators on anthropogenic climate change, Christopher Monckton and James Hansen, and an unprecedented attack by the chairman of the ABC on the professional performance of ABC journalists in reporting on this issue. We use this case study to canvass the explanatory merits of several scholarly perspectives on journalistic bias: the well-known ‘balance as bias’ argument by the Boykoffs (2004), the less well-known but incisive ‘independence/ impartiality couplet’ argument by Stuart Hall (1976) and Bourdieusian field analysis.
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