Should governments protect independent journalism?

Should governments protect independent journalism?

Should governments protect independent journalism? Turbulence is fuelling calls for extra funding, regulation or tax breaks.


"Our failure to set up adequate rules has led to the most concentrated media in the developed world, with News Ltd and Farifax Media controlling 86 per cent of circulation" ... academic Wendy Bacon.


WHEN it comes to producing journalism, opinion is cheap and facts are expensive. Breaking it down even further, agenda-driven sensationalism is much more profitable than objective reporting.

We do not need a crystal ball to see where this leads - it's already happened in the US. The profit motive has squeezed out fact-based coverage for ''infotainment'', where extreme opinions are presented under the guise of news - because it rates better.


It's a pretty grim picture there. Newspapers from coast to coast have been shutting their doors while Fox News dominates TV ratings. Powerful interests such as Rupert Murdoch have swept in to push their political agendas through media influence and ownership. A Fox News executive once bluntly told a reporter the network is "a 24/7 political campaign. Nobody [else] has been able to issue talking points to the American public morning after morning, day after day, night after night".

No wonder Gina Rinehart wants control of Fairfax. Why try to influence the media when you can own it? A while ago, the campaign group GetUp! ran a spoof front page of a newspaper with the mining industry's edits scribbled all over it. In light of recent developments, it seems a scary prediction.

Journalists are disappearing and corporate interests are lining up to fill the void. Rinehart's adviser Jack Cowin has already told the ABC "this is a business, not a public service", before outlining how profit will drive editorial direction, including on issues such as the carbon price.

We need access to independent fact-based reporting in order to make informed decisions within a democracy. That's why governments have a role in ensuring citizens are supplied with the information they need. They need to protect our right to be informed, and have a responsibility to stay at arms length so we do not simply replace Rinehart's opinion with Julia Gillard's.

Here's what they could do: increase funding and protect the independence of the ABC and SBS; increase media-ownership diversity (without playing favourites); fund an independent body to give grants to investigative journalism and start-up media companies; provide philanthropists tax breaks to do the same. The dire US situation prompted philanthropists to create ProPublica, for example, which has gone on to win several Pulitzers.

Nobody wins if this paper becomes The Sydney Mining Herald, and without government intervention Australians might only have access to ''news'' that is profitable. As the US has shown us, opinion is cheap but independent journalism is priceless.

Ed Coper is a US-based media consultant and campaigner.


THERE are so many weasel words being used in the current phase of journalism's crisis. ''Independent journalism'' - what does that mean? Journalism independent of government, independent of the owner or independent of mind?

The salutary fact is that the century-old business model that has funded quality journalism in the commercial newspaper sector has collapsed. This is because most of the advertising revenue that underpinned that funding has migrated from newspapers to the internet, but only about 15¢ of every dollar carried by newspapers has transferred online.

It's also because for the past decade the board of Fairfax, which produces much of Australia's quality journalism, was asleep at the wheel and failed to take pre-emptive action to mitigate the consequences of a trend that was obvious to many people who, unlike the board of the past decade, understood the media industry.

In the past, much of that quality journalism - such as commentary, investigations and coverage of politics, courts and public affairs - has been cross-subsidised by newspaper owners who were happy to divert some of their large profits to fund the journalism that gave them power and influence.

But now those profits have evaporated and the cross-subsidy is disappearing. Does this mean governments should step in and fill the funding void?

Well, you enter that minefield at your peril, because anyone who supports government funding of quality journalism is likely to be abused by The Australian and other proponents of free-market journalism for endorsing Soviet-style ''government control'' of journalism.

I'm prepared to wear that odium and support arms-length government funding of quality journalism, because I believe Australian democracy will be severely weakened by this market failure.

I don't support government-owned newspapers or any kind of mechanism that gives government direct influence or control over journalism.

But governments fund many parts of society, such as the courts and the arts, without having hands-on control. And governments fund many start-up businesses in which they have no say.

Quality journalism is a central plank of a civil society. We'll miss it when it has faded away and not even The Australian is around to subsidise it.

Eric Beecher is the chairman of Private Media, publisher of websites including He is a former editor of the Herald.


AUSTRALIAN governments need to do more to protect independent journalism. If they had done more in the past, the task would not be so urgent now.

Independent journalism will not flourish without diversity of ownership. Governments can pass laws designed to protect that. Our failure to set up adequate rules has led to the most concentrated media in the developed world, with News Ltd and Fairfax Media (the publisher of the Herald) controlling 86 per cent of circulation.

Gina Rinehart, who wants more influence at Fairfax, has so far failed to recognise the right of journalists to report independently. News Ltd already has a more compliant journalistic culture. These two big companies, one controlled overseas, are in a battle for survival. This calamity has been delivered by market forces.

Over the past 30 years, various inquiries have warned that concentration could lead to the abuse of private media power, just as grave a threat as government interference. Governments failed to act because they were wary of media companies who scream ''censorship'' as soon as intervention is mentioned. It needs to be understood that the interests of the public and independent journalists are not the same as the interests of media owners.

As companies seek to bolster profits by restructuring and cutting operations, the diversity, quality and quantity of independent journalism are further threatened. Faced with this crisis, governments should consider using tax-payer funds to support a more diverse public interest journalism, as is done with the arts.

The Greens suggest that charters of editorial independence could be statutorily entrenched. Again, instead of shoving the idea aside, we need to finally take the task of providing a framework for independent journalism and democratic media seriously.

The Finkelstein report outlines ways in which diversity and public interest journalism have been protected by subsidies elsewhere. Academics, including myself, submitted an idea for tax deductibility on donations for non-profit investigative journalism. Such journalism could be published in partnership with major companies as well as to support smaller independent media. Some people warn that such schemes could be politically influenced by decision makers. But if schemes have worked elsewhere, they should be considered here.

In submissions to Finkelstein the big media owners all rejected any role for government intervention. But their interests are different from those of journalists and the public. Governments should play a role in supporting journalists in producing diverse and independent journalism.

Wendy Bacon is a professor of journalism at the University of Technology, Sydney.


WE ALREADY subsidise journalism heavily. The ABC's budget for 2011-12 was $995 million. SBS got $223 million in the same period. And Parliament has specifically nominated the vast bulk of this money to "inform, educate and entertain audiences".

So it's peculiar that when media theorists devise clever schemes to subsidise journalism in order to protect democracy - such as publicly funded newspapers, or tax-deductibility for the print media - they rarely mention the money we give SBS and the ABC for that purpose.

Perhaps some people believe we should increase those broadcasters' budgets. That's a legitimate debate. Let's all draw lines and argue it out. But pretending we do not already spend an enormous amount of the public's money to inform the public is simply dishonest.

Our media debate is very provincial. Fairfax is at a crossroads. News Ltd is too, although that company is reluctant to admit it. Here, the US is about two to three years ahead of us. Their experience suggests the print media will shrink dramatically in the next few years. But it also tells us good journalism is good journalism, whether produced on paper or online.

I hope our two print giants develop new business models that suit the times. Certainly many others will. The online media in the US is vibrant and plentiful. Australian readers and writers have good reason to be optimistic, at least about the medium-term future.

If they want to be taken seriously, advocates of subsidies have to answer some basic questions. How many media outlets does healthy democracy require? We might assume more is better than fewer. But as the past year has demonstrated, many people believe some newspapers and radio stations should be run out of town. Several media critics suggest tabloids and talkback radio are hurting democracy . So just calling for "more journalism" is not much of a guide for policy-making.

Maybe the government should subsidise only "worthy" journalism, if there was a way to define such a thing. The business of the press has always been intimately connected with delivering something people want to read or watch. Right now, the case for even more journalism subsidies is little more than a thought bubble.


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