In the book I praise whistleblowers who are prepared to expose the psychopathic behaviours of their employers and colleagues, knowingly putting themselves at risk – physically, emotionally and financially.
Actively working to spread misinformation about climate change is psychopathic behaviour. This News Corp employee deserves praise and respect and I would love to find a way where society can rally to support people like her.
And, of course, it’s difficult for most of us to understand why more News Corp employees don’t speak out about their employer’s support for climate denialism. I actually quote statistics in the book comparing News Corp’s coverage of climate issues to other Australian papers.
A 2013 study of major Australian newspapers by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at the University of Technology in Sydney found that one-third of articles in 2011 and 2012 did not accept the consensus of climate scientists. The study found that Australia’s two most prominent newspapers by circulation, the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun (both, unsurprisingly, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation), published articles that were skeptical about anthropogenic climate change more than 60 percent of the time.
The Psychopath Epidemic, page 188
What we need to understand, however, is that people who work at places like News Corp have gone through several filters. They had to get through a hiring filter to work there. Then, if they don’t fit into the culture one they have a job, eg if they question too many things, or can’t accept the dominant culture, they either get filtered out (eg fired) or they filter themselves out (eg resign, like the woman in the above story did). The only people left are those that believe… or don’t care.