Australian businessman and Wotif founder Graeme Wood offered $US500,000 to help "shame" Rupert Murdoch and his media empire over their anti-climate change stance, according to hacked emails released by WikiLeaks.
An email from US PR guru David Fenton to the chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, John Podesta, says Mr Wood made the pledge to help fund a campaign to "go after" the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal and Fox News TV network.
"I sure hope something like this can happen it's long overdue," Mr Fenton wrote in his email dated February 19, 2015, according to WikiLeaks.
Attached was a five-page plan outlining how a $US2 million campaign against Mr Murdoch's "climate denialism" would work.
The document sent to Mr Podesta describes Mr Murdoch's Fox and News Corp as the "main disinformation media" on climate change in the US, Australia and Britain.
"Yet nothing is being done to fight back and reduce this pernicious influence," it says.
"There is no regular campaign to shame Rupert Murdoch and his family, board, investors, advertisers and executives for continuing to call climate change a 'hoax' and insist the earth has not warmed."
In order to take on Mr Murdoch and his media outlets, the document sets out a 12-point plan that includes a "surprisingly affordable" advertising blitz promoting climate science in the Wall Street Journal.
Picket lines outside the newspaper, Mr Murdoch's home, and Fox studios were also proposed, along with a website to analyse any false information on climate change published by his media outlets.
Board members and top executives at News Corp and Fox were to be targeted, while businesses would be urged to withdraw their ads from Murdoch-controlled media outlets.
The document suggests that by publicly "shaming" Mr Murdoch and his companies, the campaign could help his children convince him to change his mind on climate change.
"Some of us have spoken to members of the Murdoch family about this situation," the document says.
"What we hear is that the children are embarrassed."
Mr Murdoch has described himself as "a climate change skeptic not a denier".
But in a piece for the The Washington Post in 2009, his son James wrote about how it was "crunch time" for the environment, with climate prediction models suggesting "we're on the worst-case trajectory, and some cases worse than the worst case".
Comment was being sought from Mr Wood, who donated $500,000 to the Greens for their 2016 election campaign in Victoria and another $130,000 to help candidates in Tasmania.
Mr Fenton again emailed Mr Podesta on March 3, 2015 asking if he'd had any thoughts on the plan as he hoped to get his "guidance and help in making the right climate campaign happen".
The emails were contained in the latest batch dumped by WikiLeaks and purport to reveal the inner workings of Mrs Clinton's presidential campaign.
While her campaign team has sought to cast doubt on their authenticity, they have not produced evidence any were fraudulent.
