Insider says all not well at ABC over Swindle decision

onJul 12, 2007 @ 10:57 PDT

Australian newspaper, The Age, is reporting the inside scoop on the internal battles at ABC Australia over its decision to air shock-u-mentarian Martin Durkin’s “Great Global Warming Swindle.”

According to one website, the head of Factual Entertainment for ABC flew to London to personally apologize to Durkin for the “rough treatment” he received from ABC Lateline host Tony Jones who was in London last week doing a pre-taped interview to be aired after the Swindle.

(Can someone please get the Jones/Durkin interview up on YouTube!).

In a rundown of the Durkin interview, the “rough treatment” came when Jones reportedly pressed Durkin hard on the use of his now infamous “sunspot graph” that conveniently ends at 1980, when the apparent correlation between solar activity and temperature ends.

Of course, Durkin’s graph is made all the more inaccurate with the release of a study this week providing yet more evidence that the link between current warming trends and solar activity is incorrect.

By Kevin Grandia

Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmog. He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a “Green Hero” by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the “Top 50 Tweeters” on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning. Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevin’s research into the “climate denial industry” and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Koch’s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea party networks. Kevin is the first person to be designated a “Certified Expert” on the political and community organizing platform NationBuilder. Prior to DeSmog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health. In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications. Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.