Water Wars: A “Critical Listening In” to Rural Radio Discourse on a River System in Trouble

ABSTRACT

For news media on the earth's driest continent, changes in the health and politics of Australia's largest river system, the Murray-Darling, have been a major national focus for decades. In recent times, climate crisis, drought and policy failure have combined to threaten its future, putting the issue under intense public scrutiny. This article offers a critical discourse analysis of specialist rural radio coverage of the issue in 2018–19. It identifies the discourses that the Country Hour program presents and considers the voices and viewpoints that are absent. Two critical discourse moments are analyzed: an ecological disaster in which more than one million fish died, and #watergate – a pre-election scandal over commercial water rights. We map the strategies and roles of Country Hour journalists and other social actors in legitimating the “productive use” of the river system above all else, politicizing the issue and shifting responsibility for the river's wellbeing.

KEYWORDS:

• ABC Country Hour
• rural radio
• Murray-Darling Basin
• journalism and critical discourse analysis
• Menindee fish kills
• #watergate
• news and drought

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The water buyback controversy was dubbed “#watergate” by journalists because it broke on 10 April 2019 when a member of the Twitterati by the name of “Ronni Salt” – not her true name – posted a Twitter thread containing extraordinary documentation on the $79 million Eastern Australia Agriculture deal. The original post immediately went viral and journalists who re-tweeted it were served with very strong legal letters by Angus Taylor's legal team. See https://www.smh.com.au/national/all-hell-broke-loose-the-strange-story-behind-joyce-taylor-and-watergate-20190426-p51hjm.html.

2 We note that it is not illegal to set up a company in the Cayman Islands and are not alleging corruption.