Slick Award

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The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA), a peak lobby group for the oil industry and an opponent of strong government action on global warming, has awarded the JN Pierce Award for Media Excellence to the editor-in-chief of The Australian newspaper, Chris Mitchell. (The Australian is published by News Limited, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.) The media release announcing the award stated 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." Journalist Paddy Manning, who worked at The Australian between 2004 and 2007, scathingly comments, "Gobsmacking. A disgraceful admission." He notes that "despite a spectacular about-face on climate change in 2007 by News Corp's chairman Rupert Murdoch, no media group can match the Murdoch press for consistently fomenting global warming skepticism and arguing against climate change mitigation measures."