The information war about arson figures

ABC News Australia, from the Australian Institute of Criminology

Rapidly the word about the astonishing rate of arson is spreading, but it doesn’t help “the cause” (which for left-leaning journo’s appears to be getting left-leaning politicians elected).

For example, the awful Binna Burra fire in September was blamed on climate change. Instead it turned out to be caused by two teenagers with cigarette butts. Who looks silly pushing a carbon tax agenda to stop fires?

So The Guardian and the ABC are now compiling stories with conspiracy theories about how a thousand or so tweets with a pedantic error mistaking legal action for arrests somehow demonstrates a mysterious disinformation campaign (it’s pro-ject-ion.) The main mystery here is how a prof in Qld can mind read through twitter — Dr Graham tells us “The motivation underlying this often tends to not be changing people’s opinions about the bushfire itself and how it’s happening, but to sow discord and magnify already existing tensions in polarised political issues.”

Maybe people are just angry at the wanton, pointless and avoidable destruction, yeah?

The Love Media are downplaying the arrests in a situation where catching, charging and convicting people must be near impossible, so […]