Australia’s fires are a climate reckoning for the Murdoch press

FOR SEVERAL MONTHS, catastrophic fires have been raging in Australia. Collectively, they’ve torched some 38,000 square miles nationwide, killing at least 28 people and, according to the University of Sydney, more than a billion animals. In recent weeks, heart-rending stories of death and displacement have spread across the world’s media. Reports have scrutinized the regressive climate policy of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a man who once brought a lump of coal to Parliament as a prop and who vacationed in Hawai’i as his country burned. Apocalyptic imagery has adorned the...