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EXCLUSIVE
ANTHONY KLAN
An outback mega-mine owned by Gina Rinehart and run by a notorious climate denier has been spruiking Covid-19 misinformation - but Australia’s richest person has moved to ensure she doesn’t pay a cent if people actually follow the potentially dangerous advice.
Rinehart’s Roy Hill, one of Australia’s biggest mining operations, has published Sky News Australia content spruiking a Covid-19 hydroxychloroquine “cure”, including a video deleted by the media group after it was banned by Google’s You Tube for spreading misinformation.
Presented as “news releases”, the $10 billion Roy Hill has published videos of Sky News commentators Andrew Bolt and Rohan Dean advocating the unproven remedy and attacking medical authorities for blocking it.
In one of the videos, Bolt calls for an alleged Covid-19 treatment “Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin plus zinc”.
In another - one of 30-odd since deleted by Sky News owner News Corporation after it received a temporary You Tube ban in August - Dean declares Hydroxychloroquine “saves lives”.
“The jury is in and the jury says categorically hydroxychloroquine saves lives and Australians must be given access to this drug,” Dean says.
Gina Rinehart visits the White House with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Source: Roy Hill
One of the two Roy Hill media releases, published under the “News and Media Releases” section of its website, contains a link to a video is from a fringe US group called the “Alliance for Human Research Protection”.
The video claims that a “false COVID-19 narrative” had been “created & sustained for six months” and that US government officials engaged in “collusion to demonise an effective existing medicine”.
Yet Rinehart, Australia’s richest person with an estimated wealth of $31 billion (US$22.2 billion) - and who has previously pushed conspiracy theories - appears to have little desire to put her money where her mouth is.
Each of media releases contains a highly unusual, 330-word, “disclaimer”, purporting to absolve Rinehart of any responsibility should members of the public follow the advice.
The media releases on the Roy Hill website. Source: Roy Hill
“Mrs Gina Rinehart, Hancock prospecting Pty Ltd, its directors, officers, its subsidiaries and related entities take no responsibility for the veracity of the information shown above and to the fullest extent possible disclaim all and any liability,” the disclaimer says.
“Any direct, indirect, special, exemplary or other damages or negative health effects that may arise” from “utilising any of the above information” should any “individual choose to follow any part of the above information”, it says.
“Mrs Gina Rinehart, Hancock prospecting Pty Ltd, its directors, officers, its subsidiaries and related entities take no responsibility for the veracity of the information shown above” — Roy Hill
One of the “news and media releases” published by Roy Hill. Source: Roy Hill
Rinehart and her related companies are more likely to be successfully sued for spreading misinformation that causes death or injury than Bolt, Dean or Sky News, who have greater legal defences on grounds of being “media”.
Roy Hill and Rinehart did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Klaxon over several months.
The Covid-19 videos were posted on August 31 and September 9 last year.
Both of the Roy Hill “news” releases remain on the company’s site, although the link to one of the Sky News videos is inactive.
It was one of the 30-odd deleted by Sky News and its parent company, News Corporation Australia, after the You Tube ban.
You Tube, owned by Google, banned Sky News Australia in August for breaching its medical misinformation rules by posting multiple videos which encouraged people to use hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, or which denied the existence of Covid-19 entirely.
Sky News Australia has 1.85 million subscribers.
News of its You Tube ban emerged the same day that Sky News launched a new free-to-air channel across regional Australia, called Sky News Regional.
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Last month it emerged Rinehart had given a speech to high school students where she attacked climate change “propaganda” and boasted that she had previously helped convince students that climate change was not human induced.
Last year Rinehart wrote to Roy Hill employees and recommended they drink hot water twice daily “with fresh lemon pieces or juice and honey to taste” because “Covid-19 does not like heat”.
Roy Hill’s directors include Ian Plimer, a notorious climate change denier.
Last year News Corporation’s The Australian newspaper was forced to run a lengthy public notice after publishing an article by Plimer which claimed there “are no carbon emissions”.
In Plimer’s article, titled “Let’s not pollute minds with carbon fears”, he wrote: there “are no carbon emissions. If there were, we could not see because most carbon is black”.
Plimer also made reference to “unsubstantiated claims polar ice is melting” and “fraudulent changing of past weather records”.
The Australian Press Council found the newspaper breached two of the “general principles of reporting” including “ensuring factual material is accurate, (principle 1)” and ensuring facts are presented with reasonable fairness and balance and that opinion is based on fact.
Climate scientists described the Plimer article as “blatantly false”.
Plimer also declined to comment.
The Roy Hill homepage. Source: Roy Hill
The disclaimers on the two Roy Hill media releases state: “Do not use the above information to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, sickness or ailment, for therapeutic purposes or as a substitute for the advice of a health professional”.
“Individuals using the above information do so at their sole risk and they together with their family, agents, executors and assigns fully release and hold harmless Mrs Gina Rinehart, Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd, its directors, officers, subsidiaries and related entities from any claims, damages, distress or otherwise that may be suffered, arise or be caused in any way whatsoever from following, relying on, or in anyway whatsoever reading or using the information above,” they state.
Sky News Australia is seeking to replicate Fox News in the US, which is also owned by News Corporation.
News Corporation Australia is owned by US-based parent News Corporation, controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Fox News runs highly-partisan “right-wing” content.
Experts say Fox News programming is one of the biggest factors behind extreme political polarisation in the US, which in turn has substantially contributed to the country’s diminishing authority on the global stage.
Fox News has been sued in the US over broadcasts claiming Covid-19 was a “hoax” in ways that “potentially undermined efforts to slow the spread of the disease”.
The US has seen 48 million cases of Covid-19 and recorded 777,000 Covid-19 deaths.
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Welcome
Editor, Anthony Klan
Australian journalism is under threat like never before. So too is the ability for us, the public, to make informed decisions. A disintegrating media is serving to further concentrate the already vast, unhealthy, power held by a few. That power is routinely abused, its attendant responsibilities wilfully ignored, and our democracy weakened.
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Anthony Klan
Editor, The Klaxon
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