How the media distorts attitudes to a green shift

The ownership pattern of Britain's media is challenged today – by two stories in the media. Bother are opinion polls, both show big support for strong moves away from oil and gas, and both directly contradict the narratives of the majority of Britain's newspapers.

The first shows that there is majority (nearly three in five) for a complete ban on gas boilers in new homes within ten years. This contrasts markedly with the story being told in most of the media which portrays it as if there is majority fury that they are 'coming for our central heating'.

Indeed the various moves in the legislation which proposed doing this were bitterly opposed and attacked in the media (though the Scottish Government which produced the legislation is partly culpable for its ham-fisted handling of the question of log stoves in rural areas, an unnecessary intervention which created legitimate ill will).

Yet they are popular and supported. Will this be widely reported today?

The second opinion poll is in some ways even more surprising given the media narrative. Among all Scots, 57 per cent support a ban on future drilling for oil and gas and rapid shift to renewable energy. This rises to 75 per cent of those under 35.

But perhaps the most startling finding in this poll is that support for an end to new oil and gas has almost 50 per cent support in the North East. Almost all the commentary about public attitudes to oil and gas suggest that the North East was lost to renewable energy support a long time ago. That is simply nonsense.

It is not just in the overwhelmingly right-wing billionaire-owned newspapers that we find this effect. The media pays an awful lot of attention to itself and the narratives it presents are picked over by its journalists endlessly. The views of the public are therefore filtered through the interpretation put on them by media outlets which are anything but objective.

Which means we almost certainly fail to understand the real picture of what is happening with public attitudes. Take the North East for example; it seems wrong to suggest that they are in the camp of 'drain every last drop' because this opinion poll shows that on average they are not.

But that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of political anger around the North East because there is. There was visible support for the angry, right-wing Raise the Flags campaign and there has been rising levels of support for Reform. But those are the same phenomenon and there remain many more people opposed to new drilling than there are who will vote for Reform. That is a story seldom told.

So the media is happy to interpret the anger as anger at environmentalists, but it is very far from clear that this is accurate. Most people in the North East appear very aware that the boom times for oil and gas are over and that decline has set in. At the moment global oil prices are falling rapidly while the cost of extraction in the North Sea is rising.

In parallel with this there is ever-increasing commentary (not least from Common Weal) to demonstrate that the 'just transition' from oil to renewables has been a mirage, not a reality. It is something politicians have said and not done. The reality is that politicians can't stop the inevitable decline in the North Sea but they can work to prevent negative consequences – and they aren't.

A pro-green shift public, a North East which is aware the decline in oil and gas is inevitable and must be managed, a massive generational shift which appears set to propel support for a green transition to the top of the political agenda – is that regularly reported in the media?

About 90 per cent of UK newspapers are owned by three corporations. Newspapers increasingly don't reveal their circulation figures but the Daily Mail, Sun, Telegraph, Express, Star and Times continue to dominate, all ideologically right wing, anti-environmental campaigning publications. They set the news agenda and the BBC follows. Then the politics follows that.

What these polls effectively show is that climate change action and media reform are inextricably linked. We allow billionaire activists to distort the reality of our news in Britain and gaslight us into believing that our pro-environment views are in a minority when they are not. The impact on politics is becoming a threat to the future of the planet.