Was Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. behind Climategate?

Some are wondering if the embattled media tycoon was behind the scandal that derailed the Copenhagen climate negotiations.

Thu, Jul 21 2011 at 10:10 AM

Related Topics:

Climate Talks, Climategate

CLIMATE JOB: Rupert Murdoch is defending his empire against some strong allegations, but there still may be more to come. (Photo: Zuma Press Inc.)

As details continue to unfold from the News Corp. phone-hacking scandal, some in the environmental community are wondering if the communications giant was behind the "Climategate" email hacking scandal.

For those unfamiliar with Climategate, it was the scandal where the email accounts of several of the world’s most influential scientists were hacked before the Copenhagen climate negotiations in late 2009. The emails were then taken out of context to make it appear as if the scientists were manipulating data related to global warming. Several investigations revealed that the scientists were not messing with the data, but by the time the scientists had their names cleared, the damage had been done, and the climate negotiations had been derailed. To this day, no one has been able to find out who was behind the hacking, but with the News Corp. scandal unraveling before our eyes, some are wondering if Rupert Murdoch’s company was behind this as well.

A story on ThinkProgress.org points out that, “in the light of the News Corp. phone-hacking scandal, it is clear that Murdoch’s outfit had means, motive, and opportunity for the Climategate email hacking. News Corp. certainly has a history of defaming climate scientists and a penchant for hacking.”

While it’s completely possible that News Corp. had nothing to do with Climategate, there are a few connections between the organization and the scandal. Consider this: Neil Wallis, the former News of the World executive editor, also has a pretty strong connection to the University of East Anglia (UEA), which is where the Climategate hacking took place. Wallis became a senior consultant to Outside Organization, a PR firm and crisis management agency, which was used by the UEA following the Climategate scandal.

Perhaps it’s a stretch, but with everything we are learning about this News Corp. situation, nothing seems out of the ordinary.

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Comments: 3

ronnie Jul 27 2011 at 8:46 PM

"...the communications giant was behind the "Climategate" email hacking scandal." Really? "...the email accounts of several of the world’s most influential scientists were hacked ..." Really? "To this day, no one has been able to find out who was behind the hacking,..." ... and so on and so on. Sounds like a faith based belief that the emails were "hacked". Well, such a view is understandable when one realizes that faith is a prerequisite to believing in catastrophic global warming based on the

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CRU's closely guarded archives of global temperature records. '

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Leo Morgan Jul 24 2011 at 10:14 AM

Some people might wonder if News Corp was behind Climategate, because some people will wonder all sorts of crazy things. The answer is obviously "No it wasn't, because the data did not turn up in the newspapers first, they appeared in the blogs." The whole point of a newspaper doing such a thing would be to get a newspaper 'scoop'. Claiming 'the scientists had their name cleared' is profoundly partisan, in view of the fact they criminally conspired to evade the Freedom of Information legislation

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of two countries, and the taxation laws of a third. The UK Information Commissioner said that “more cogent” prima facie evidence of an offence under the FOI Act was impossible to contemplate. Nobody has validated the science of the Climate Research Unit. That's impossible, since they not only destroyed their data, but also the records of how they processed their data. Not one of the reviews even tried, so we have only the words of the notorious 'Phil read this' e-mail that the CRU's databases were unable to ever get an accurate result. In view of the above, you know that anyone who claims 'the scientists were cleared' or 'the science was found correct' should be disregarded. They have placed politics above the facts. And if they do that once, then they'll do it again.