Good article, Mark; many thanks.

Another example of poor journalism is the attitude shown by one of The Australia's environmental reporters Leigh Dayton who has seriously misinterpreted an ANU research article. In an email I sent to Dayton on March 22, I said:

"In your February 17 article headed 'Fatal flaws in 'stay or go bushfire strategy', you stated that the findings of the ANU report written by Philip Gibbons and his team were that 'prescribed backburning would not protect against intense fires such as Black Saturday's'.

I attach the Gibbons report to this email as the finding that you claim was made in the report is simply not correct. On page 4, it states: "Our results therefore indicated that prescribed burning — when executed at the scale observed in this study — was most effective when undertaken close to houses and at least every 5 years." On page 3, the report states: "an average of 15% fewer houses were destroyed when prescribed burning was undertaken 0.5 km from houses (the minimum distance we observed), compared with 8.5 km from houses (the mean distance we observed)."

Clearly, the report found that prescribed burns (but not backburns - I'm unsure where you found reference to backburning in the article, especially since backburning is a specific fire protection action not normally related to prescribed burning) are effective if carried out close to houses and at intervals of five years or less.

Unfortunately, the environmental movement is deliberately misinterpreting the Gibbons report in their ongoing campaign against science-based management of our forests. While I strongly agree that current prescribed burning practices need to be improved, prescribed burning remains an extremely important forest management tool that must be used in our forests to better manage forest values and protect human life and property."

In her reply to me, Dayton said she'd spoken to Gibbons but she made no response to my claim that she had seriously misinterpreted the Gibbon's written report. This strikes me as an example of bias, with the reporter putting personal views that have no scientific validity into a newspaper article.

While the ABC supports mindless environmental activism without considering the consequences, so does the Federal Govt. What good does it do to have a whole lot more snails, frogs and grass, if humans are suffering?

This is part of a UN endeavour to suppress human development under the guise of the environmental protection. Gillard is such a patsy for these groups it is quite alarming.

Yes Mark, definitely time to defund the ABC. Perhaps it should be sold to Gina Rinehart, she appears to have an interest in the media. That would really be a laugh. Fun to watch the fireworks. She knows haw to run a business, so could perhaps even make the ABC work.

Sorry Atman, you've got that totally wrong. In fact we need a massive breeding program on frogs & snails, & damn soon.

With this government, run by the greens, it won't be long before most agricultural production will be outlawed.

We are going to need those frogs & snails to replace a whole range of our current foodstuff. That or starve, probably Bobs preference.

That Media Watch program was about sloppy journalism and the take home I got from it was that whoever did the reporting did no checking of who they were writing about. What Media Watch found was what they found by doing a bit of diligent searching and tracking. Make of that what you will.

We live in a world of mistrust and if I am working on stories where I see potential trojan horses I am very wary.

I asked ABC media watch to investigate "something in the water" the day after it first aired.

I recieved no response.

Nothing was done.

Bias in relations to Forestry was one of the issues with "something in the water', but the scare mongering in relation to cancer was appauling and far worse than just bias.

Another good article Mark.

Renew,

While the Media Watch segment may have come across as muddled and sloppy journalism, it is not because they didn't know who they were doing the hatchet job on, and not because they didn't put time into the segment.

They had two researchers working for two weeks on that story.

There difficulty was that the story wouldn't come together as they anticipated. They kept trying and trying and in the end they just made fools of themselves.

Here is a link to my answers to their original questions to me...

http://jennifermarohasy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/JenniferMarohasy_ReplytoMediaWatch_Amended12March.pdf

In fact they had a tremendous amount of information, but they choose to ignore it.

A key criticism of media watch was the relationship of the scientist to the environment group. However such a relationship did not concern Media Watch when the ABC reported on Professor's Brendon Mackey's Green Carbon report funded by the Wilderness Society.

This AM story http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2008/s2324272.htm even includes senior Wilderness society activist Virginia Young agreeing with the report that the Wilderness society funded. Despite appearing on ABC Science, National Interest, and AM a year later, Media Watch failed to criticise the media for failing to report the strong relationship between Mackey and the Wilderness Sciety.

A simple google search would reveal that he was a founding member of the lobby groups wildcountry science panel and had produced 'academic' papers criticising a range of government policy including the Regional Forest Agreements. Mackey's work has been used by Get up! and others to attack Tasmania's forest management see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx3WqdafdOU&list=UUtLKfHEpPAsZ731w-3XTjuA&index=11&feature=plcp .

Yet the media has remained silent when Professor Mackey has joined Professor West, a former national Director of the Wilderness Society, to be part of the Independent Verication Group examining the claims of the Wilderness Society to lock up 572,000 ha of Tasmania's Native forest. Mackey in turn appointed the spokesperson for the Get up! add to help examine these claims.

I wonder if any journalists will actually ever report the connection of these accademic activists and the greens/Engo. Or will they discover that Virginia Young was proposed to be a part of Mackey's 'independent' Work group. But it won't take Media Watch or a lengthy investigation to discover that the independent group found that the Wilderness Society claims were supported by the 'independent' academics.

Jennifer:

Thankyou for the detailed background most enlightening. When I said "sloppy", it was in reference to the original media coverage and what Holmes said about that.

I still maintain that it is a responsibility of the journalist to look carefully at the credentials and backgrounds of persons making public statements.

Renew

I don't disagree that they should look into the background of people making various claims. But when they do this they should then honestly report what they find.

Media Watch did not honestly report what they found.

Again I refer you to the information that I made available to them.. here http://jennifermarohasy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/JenniferMarohasy_ReplytoMediaWatch_Amended12March.pdf

The Media Watch segment was not only sloppy journalism it was dishonest and misleading.

The problem with the ABC is that it doesn't know how to present stories with the desirable commercial slant. Commercial media knows how to present environment stories..."money good, nature bad". Another problem is that commercial media doesn't control 100% of Australia's media. How can you control the narrative when you have loose cannons wantonly telling the truth?

Poor Australians, we're on the verge of starving to death and those nasty greenies are trying to conserve Nature. Can you believe it?

And what about Media Watch picking on the poor widdle Australian Environment Foundation? OK, just because they should have been called the "Rampant Exploitation of the Environment Foundation" and are funded by the biggest rapers of Nature why shouldn't they have "environment" in their name?

Another well-argued article, Mark. I wonder if Media Watch has seen it and what their reaction is.

The Wilderness Society opinion piece in The Age of 21/3, which you mention, got a prominent position opposite the main editorial page. However, a factual, unemotional article about using biomass, including woodchips, for energy generation the day before, was placed in the much-less-read Business section. The Age’s position is clear!

World Forestry Day, on 21 March, deserved something much better from The Age than a rant on the “evils” of a valid use of waste timber from our well-managed native forests. WFD is meant to be a day of celebrating the value of forests to society. It would be interesting to know if any media in Australia promoted WFD in a postive way.

Great article!! As a frustrated Labour voter I continue to lament the opportunity the ALP had to smash the Green's several years ago. You provide a number of good reasons to sugget that many 'Green' supporters are not familiar with the old adage of 'cutting off one's nose to spite one's face'!!