Australia's media watchdog not holding News Corp to account

Australia’s official media watchdog is no longer fulfilling its intended purpose, reports Alan Austin.

*Also listen to the audio version of this article on Spotify HERE.

A CAMPAIGN OF malicious lies about the Indigenous Voice to Parliament by the Murdoch media is well underway. This highlights the urgent need for mechanisms to alert Australians to deliberate falsehoods so they can be stopped in their tracks.

Unfortunately, the Australian Press Council (APC) is not achieving this end. This is a great pity, as this column has long supported the Council.

Take the latest adjudication as an illustration. The Council criticised the Daily Telegraph on 7 June this year for an article published in March 2020 reporting a 2019 manslaughter trial. The APC judged the article had referred to the victim as transgender when her gender status was not relevant to the offence.

The lag between writing the defective article and its exposure as breaching APC standards is more than three years. That is far too long if the remedial process is to have any effect on current events.

Murdoch presenters and executives admit they lie to you routinely

The latest court documents provide damning proof of News Corp’s intentional malice and mendacity.

Offenders never named and shamed

We know the offending story was run in News Corp’s Daily Telegraph and possibly other Murdoch outlets. But we are not told who wrote it, or the editor who approved the final shonky version.

Covering up offenders’ names diminishes the educative purpose of an adverse APC decision and reduces the punitive effect close to zero. Who at the Daily Tele, or anywhere else, needs to do anything differently following this ruling?

Prioritising social evils

That adverse APC finding correctly censured the Daily Telegraph for its gratuitous use of the term transgender. But was that article, really, this outlet’s most egregious failure in March 2020? That was when the Telegraph was enthusiastically lying about NSW Labor Leader Jodi McKay, concealing the Berejiklian regime’s corruption, refusing to report on the environmental destruction being wrought in NSW, declining to expose the rorts of Nationals Leader John Barilaro and continuing its relentless attacks against progressive causes.

That was also when the Morrison Government was engaging in multiple corrupt schemes which News Corp refused to reveal. It was when federal debt reached an all-time high of $580 billion, when the jobless rate began its climb to 7.5% and when COVID infections soared above 3,000 — none of which News Corp reported accurately.

Number of judgments issued

According to the APC’s latest annual report, for 2021-22, 694 complaints were received throughout the year, with 81% partially or fully upheld. Of these, 22 resulted in published adverse judgments. That is quite low, considering the hundreds, if not thousands, of mendacious articles published each year.

That’s well down from 1,076 complaints received two years earlier, of which just 16 resulted in critical published adjudications.

The total cost of running the Council was $1.61 million in 2021-22. Funding comes from news companies according to their size, with News Corp by far the largest contributor, giving the Council ‘31%-70%’ of its core funding, according to the annual report.

Voice debate exposes a broken Australian media

Mainstream media coverage of the Voice to Parliament debate has highlighted the problem of bias and manipulation leaving an unfair media playing field.

News Corp is the problem

This column found last April that 75% of all complaints investigated from May 2021 to April 2023 were against Murdoch publications. Of all articles in breach, 75% were from News Corp.

That is an increase over our January 2022 analysis, which reported this at 70% and significantly higher than our findings in September 2020 that 62% of complaints upheld were against News Corp outlets.

This trend line confirms what is obvious to any attentive observer. News Corp is an evil organisation whose social destruction globally via its malicious falsehoods is steadily worsening.

News Corp’s Fox News in the USA paid a defamation settlement of A$1.2 billion to Dominion Voting Systems in April following a lengthy campaign of deliberate lies against that company. It has paid hefty settlements to others. Yet it has shown no remorse and is not changing its ways.

The current campaign in Australia against the Indigenous Voice was exposed last Tuesday by former Coalition Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and former General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation and ACTU president Sharan Burrow:

“Sky News is regularly promoting anti-voice misinformation that is demonstrably false. It is a deliberate campaign to spread fear and misinformation in the lead-up to the referendum, with the objective of securing a no vote.”

Responses from the APC

Independent Australia asked the Council why it doesn’t name and shame individual journalists and editors, nor identify multiple offenders (such as Andrew Bolt), nor highlight News Corp as the dominant offender, along with other questions regarding case volume and funding models alternative to having News Corp as the principal donor.

The Council declined to address the specific questions, but offered this general response:

The Australian Press Council takes a range of factors into consideration to determine whether a complaint ought to proceed to adjudication.

Over the years, Council has consistently referred only a small percentage of complaints received by the Council to Adjudication. This reflects the fact that complaints are considered on an individual basis, and, for a number of reasons, the assessment is that the majority of complaints received do not require referral to adjudication ...

The Council assesses the complaints it receives about published material against its Standards of Practice. Adherence to the Council’s Standards is on the premise that the "publication" must take reasonable steps to comply with the Council’s Standards ...

The APC is a self-regulatory body but alternative funding sources are reviewed and considered from time to time.

Ultimately, the Council’s effectiveness is demonstrated by an improvement in the quality of journalism.

News Corp is getting progressively worse, not better. Its current campaign of lies and deceit against the Voice is proof.

*This article is also available on audio here: