Chris Mitchell

Chris Mitchell is the editor-in-chief of The Australian newspaper.

Climate Change "Dirty Dozen"
In a talk given in Australia on 20 February 2006, Clive Hamiliton (director of The Australia Institute) identifies Mitchell as one of Australia's climate change "dirty dozen" (others are : Hugh Morgan, John Eyles, Ron Knapp, Alan Oxley, Peter Walsh, Meg McDonald, Barry Jones, Ian MacFarlane, Alan Moran, Malcolm Broomhead, and John Howard):
 * "As editor-in-chief at The Australian, and before that at the Courier Mail, Mitchell has adopted an aggressive stance against anyone arguing that climate change is a problem. Not only have the opinion pages of The Australian provided unlimited space for all of the anti-greenhouse crazies but the news pages have regularly been turned over to anti-greenhouse propaganda. As an illustration of how news values now take second place to ideology, The Australian in January ran an anonymous anti-greenhouse news story - note, not an opinion piece - by someone identified as a &#8216;special correspondent&#8217; employed by the fossil fuel lobby."

2009 Award
In June 2009, APPEA announced that the editor of The Australian newspaper, Mr Chris Mitchell had won the award for "for coverage of climate change policy – an issue of great relevance to Australia’s oil and gas exploration and production industry."

Announcing the award, APPEA’s Chief Executive Belinda Robinson stated in a media release that "over the past twelve months The Australian's in-depth coverage of a range of public policy issues affecting Australia’s upstream oil and gas industry has been of a consistently high standard. The reporting has been thoughtful, balanced, analytical, well researched and a big effort was made to ensure that all facets of the issue were presented." It also stated that "several correspondents at The Australian including Michael Stutchbury, Lenore Taylor, Matt Chambers, Cath Hart and Matthew Warren, were judged to have significantly contributed to this very high standard of journalism."

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Climate change skeptics