{"id":1083,"date":"2014-06-24T00:03:22","date_gmt":"2014-06-24T00:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/tc\/?p=1083"},"modified":"2014-06-24T00:07:21","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T00:07:21","slug":"academics-and-the-australian-go-up-in-smoke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/tc\/2014\/06\/24\/academics-and-the-australian-go-up-in-smoke\/","title":{"rendered":"Academics and The Australian go up in smoke"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alan Austin<\/a><\/p>\n

This post originally appeared on Independent Australia<\/a>. We post it here under Creative Commons license.<\/p>\n

Prominent Australian professors have been caught out making false statements in the tobacco wars started by Rupert Murdoch\u2019s News Corp.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

SEVERAL ACADEMICS used by the Murdoch-owned newspaper The Australian<\/em> have been seriously singed in the last week. They include Professor Judith Sloan<\/a> from Melbourne University, Wollongong University\u2019s Professor Henry Ergas<\/a> and Professor Sinclair Davidson<\/a> from RMIT.<\/p>\n

This saga shows, intriguingly, how The Australian<\/em> is following the malicious Murdoch modus operandum<\/em> in Britain.<\/p>\n

The current saga began with The Australian\u2019s<\/em> front page \u2018exclusive\u2019 on June 6 by Christian Kerr<\/a> announcing<\/a> that cigarette plain packaging has caused an increase in sales.<\/p>\n

That story quoted discredited industry sources, made several false claims and omitted significant vital information.<\/p>\n

This went largely unremarked in Australia, presumably because The Australian<\/em> is notorious for these failures. Only economist Stephen Koukoulas<\/a> in his blog The Kouk<\/em> publicly challenged<\/a> the story. His blog provides an excellent blow by blow dismantling of The Australian\u2019s<\/em> mendacious campaign.<\/p>\n

In Britain, however, where debate on plain packaging is raging, Murdoch\u2019s newspapers and others gleefully regurgitated<\/a> the story. This was a huge boost<\/a> for the tobacco industry, which bitterly opposes the reform.<\/p>\n

Then last Monday, two things happened.<\/p>\n

The Australian<\/em> fired back<\/a> at Koukoulas with the heavy artillery of Judith Sloan, a professorial fellow at the Melbourne Institute<\/a> of Applied Economic and Social Research at Melbourne University:<\/p>\n

‘There are at least four problems with the Kouk\u2019s analysis. The first is that expenditure figures do not allow us to know precisely what has happened to quantity, a point made above. And here\u2019s the second problem \u2014 through most of 2013, total spending on cigarettes rose.’ <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As The Kouk<\/em> showed<\/a> convincingly on his blog almost immediately, all four points of rebuttal were actually untrue.<\/p>\n

Reader comments<\/a> following Sloan\u2019s article in The Australian<\/em> were suddenly closed and she has not been heard from on the matter since.<\/p>\n

Then on Monday night the ABC\u2019s Media Watch<\/em> exposed<\/a> the many falsehoods in Kerr\u2019s story. It also highlighted Kerr\u2019s association<\/a> with the Institute of Public Affairs<\/a> (IPA) and its history of advocacy for big tobacco.<\/p>\n