• A new report “Who Controls Our Media: Exposing the impact of media concentration on our democracy” has found that Australia’s increasingly poor media diversity is having a corrosive impact on the nation’s democracy.
• According to the report, one media company accounts for 59% of all print readership, and three companies own 90% of Australia’s metropolitan radio licenses.
• The report’s authors recommend empowering the Australian Communications and Media Authority, increasing public funding for journalism and re-instituting caps on media ownership in the same markets.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

The domination of Australian media by a handful of companies has brought Australian politics to a gridlock — and new mediums and media rules are only making this worse, not better.

That’s the thrust of a new report into Australia’s media diversity commissioned by progressive group GetUp! and written by two media researchers from University of Sydney, Benedetta Brevini and Michael Ward.

With Australia’s media market already well known for being one of the most concentrated in the world, “Who Controls Our Media: Exposing the impact of media concentration on our democracy” quantifies who is attracting the eyeballs and dollars and what can be done to shift that balance.

A few companies commanding all of Australia’s eyeballs and media revenue

The report finds that Australia’s media diversity is getting worse, not better.

News Corp Australia has increased its share of print readership from 25% in 1984 to 59% today, with Nine Entertainment – the publisher of this masthead – coming in at second with 23%.

This shift towards the major players is happening against the backdrop of plunging newspaper numbers. 106 local and regional papers closed their doors between 2008 and 2018 — a full 15% of all Australian newsrooms.

This print domination extends to other mediums according to the report. Nearly 90% of the metropolitan radio licenses are owned by News Corp, Nine and Southern Cross Media.

Meanwhile in TV, News Corp and Nine account for nearly two thirds of all Australian television revenues, with the former owning Australia’s only subscription television service.

Why this matters, according to the report’s authors, is that the lack of diversity restricts public discourse to what fits into the editorial stance of the companies.

“It has skewed public debate, favouring the interests of the wealthy and powerful over the public good,” the report says.

The report uses News Corp’s “climate misinformation” as an example, saying the company’s editorial position has halted any attempt at legislative approaches to combatting climate change.

“This would not have been possible in a more diverse media landscape, where the excessive power of corporations like News Corp is diluted to make way for a media sector that not only holds the government to account, but itself too,” Brevini and Ward write.

The report points out that these problems are only getting worse with the removal of the two of our three rule in 2017 and the introduction of the news media bargaining code, from which 90% of the revenue is expected to go to Australia’s three biggest media companies.

The growing popularity of new formats hasn’t solved the problem either, according to researchers.

“It also shows how these few corporations are extending their dominant positions — from the legacy media services of radio, television, and print, into digital news and on- demand services,” the report said.

How to improve media diversity in Australia

Brevini and Ward suggest a swathe of regulatory changes to try improve media diversity in Australia, narrowing in on three main areas: strengthening the regulator, ownership restrictions and putting more money into public interest journalism.

Some broad suggestions include giving more teeth to the Australian Communications and Media Authority to report on the revenue, expenditure and ownership of Australian media, reversing funding cuts to Australia’s public broadcasters and introducing new ownership caps in some media markets.

The report even includes recommendations aimed at building confidence in media independence, including creating a public register for politicians to declare every meeting they have with media executives and owners.

With these changes, Brevini and Ward believe, Australia can introduce more and newer voices in the public square.

“It is not just that media concentration restricts and silences minority voices and dissent, or that public discourse becomes controlled by vested interests,” they write.

“It’s much more — leaving the media in the hands of a powerful few allows those few to direct public policy, shape media regulation, and erode the principles of Australian democracy.”

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