More than ever, Australia needs valiant guardians to protect against malevolent manipulators, as Alan Austin reports.
THE AUSTRALIAN PRESS COUNCIL is like King Théoden of Rohan when JRR Tolkien’s readers first meet him in Edoras. Once a proud warrior, he is now wearied, bent and impotent after decades of failing to resist the lies and deceptions bedevilling his realm.
With a federal election due before May, Australians can expect Mordor to strengthen as the Wormtongues in the mainstream newsrooms ramp up their deliberate falsehoods.
Economic falsehoods exempt
As far as we can tell, the Press Council has never sin-binned any publication for lying about the economy despite countless transgressions. Can it change this policy?
On 19 August this year, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) ran a story titled, ‘The $20 billion interest bill hitting home buyers and the economy’.
The story's false assertions included:
- government failures have kept interest rates higher than in other nations;
- JobSeeker recipients are increasing alarmingly; and
- Labor always mismanages the economy.
The article offered no data to support these falsehoods, only the opinions of anti-Labor commentators. Following an exchange of emails unsuccessfully seeking either evidence or a correction, IA sent a complaint to the Press Council with the data proving the claims untrue. Some of that information has been published by IA here, here and here.
Jobseeker numbers, for example, were down to 3.65% of the adult population at the time of publication, close to the lowest on record.
The Council declined to investigate the article, despite it being clearly riddled with lies.
The Age and SMH then ran an even more egregious compilation of falsehoods on 7 October 2024 titled, ‘See the spending changes in your area as cash-strapped Melburnians ditch dining out and movies’.
The narrative was the direct opposite of the truth. Assertions contradicted by the evidence included:
Falsehood one
‘Forget going to a restaurant or visiting the cinema — Melburnians are choosing to save money and stay at home.’
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), dining out has surged in Victoria over the last two years. ABS file 8501, table 12 shows spending on cafes and restaurants has reached a new all-time high several times.
Falsehood two
‘The cost-of-living crisis is continuing to place pressure on households across the city, with data from Visa showing a decline in dining and entertainment spending.’
Datasets from 30 sources show the crisis ended in the second half of 2023. Most of these are linked here and here.
ABS and other statistics prove all Australians, including Melburnians, are now in a remarkable consumer spending boom — the opposite of a cost of living crisis. Monthly inflation was down to 2.65% when the article was published.
Calls to the National Debt Hotline for emergency assistance had declined for the second straight month, down to 11,450 in September. That was far below the 13,000-plus calls in September 2018 and 2019, pre-COVID.
Falsehood three
‘On average, people in Greater Melbourne spent $25 a week on dining between June 2023 and May 2024, a drop of 11 per cent compared with the previous period.’
No evidence for this was shown. ABS file 8501, table 12, reveals total spending on dining out in Victoria between June 2023 and May 2024 was 10.3% higher than spending on the same services between June 2022 and May 2023.
Falsehood four
‘There has also been a decline in entertainment spending in Greater Melbourne. People are spending an average of 11 per cent – or $163 – less a year.’
No evidence was provided. ABS file 6291, table 04, shows workers employed between June 2023 and May 2024 in arts and recreation was 12.1% higher than in the previous year.
Falsehood five
This erroneous statement was attributed to Visa Australia’s head of consulting and analytics:
‘Over the past two years, we have seen the rise in inflation outpace the growth in wages. As a result, consumers have had to increase the proportion of their income allocated to essential purchases, such as food and utilities...’
That was clearly false. Inflation has been well below wage growth in all quarters since the 2023 fourth quarter.
After exhaustive correspondence with the article’s author, her supervisor at The Age and with Visa Australia, which supplied her with the dodgy data, a complaint was sent to the Press Council. This also set out clearly the evidence exposing the lies.
Current efforts woefully inadequate
In an hour or so, an officer should have been able to confirm the sources, check the arithmetic and issue an adverse assessment based on manifest falsification. This would have increased the Council’s negative findings to seven — up from the pathetically low six for the year to date.
As argued in an earlier analysis, an efficient media watchdog should be able to expose about 25 shonky articles every month — just on the economy.
The Council again declined to investigate. IA then wrote back asking if (i) there is a policy or other reason why falsehoods regarding the economy are never investigated, (ii) if it could do so in the future, and (iii) if streamlined processes might achieve more adjudications.
The Council replied that it ‘accepts complaints about articles reporting on the Australian economy’ and these ‘are considered on a case-by-case basis to assess whether reasonable steps have been taken to comply with Council’s Standards of Practice’.
Between now and the Election, we will alert the Council to further breaches by the Wormtongues of Mount Fang. Then, like Théoden’s sister-daughter Lady Eowyn in Dunharrow on the eve of battle, we must await our stroke of doom.
Alan Austin is an Independent Australia columnist and freelance journalist. You can follow him on Twitter @alanaustin001.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
Support independent journalism Subscribe to IA.
