The Coalition’s cuts to ABC funding will reach a cumulative total of over $1 billion by 2024, according to a new study of media and its ownership in Australia, which also confirms the extraordinary dominance of News Corp in the Australian newspaper market.
Who Controls Our Media, by academics Benedetta Brevini and Michael Ward and commissioned by GetUp, dissects the market share of each major media company across newspapers, television, radio and online, as well as examining the impacts on national broadcasting of seven years of Coalition cuts.
Brevini and Ward show that total funding lost each year by the ABC, including via the cessation of tied funding for programs like the Australian Network regional television service, will reach $638 million this year and just over $1 billion by 2023-24, in the absence of any additional funding.
The report also examines the relative share of newspaper readership, with News Corp having 59% of readership in 2020, well over twice the readership of Nine Entertainment on 23%, and Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media on 15%. Readership broadly matches revenue, with News Corp controlling 62% of revenue compared to 27% for Nine and 11% for Stokes. News Corp also controls 17 of 31 metropolitan newspapers.
News Corp is also one of Australia’s biggest tax dodgers, and in recent years has received far more from taxpayers via grants from the Coalition than it has paid in tax. Paul Kelly, one of the company’s most senior editorial figures and editor-at-large of The Australian, has endorsed critics’ accusations that News Corp is a partisan outlet, saying “this is merely the working rule of established media. Centre-right newspapers back centre-right parties…”
The ABC and Nine both ranked ahead of News Corp on news site ratings in December 2020 but News Corp leads commercial television revenue via Foxtel, which earned revenue of $2.2 billion in 2020 compared to Nine’s $1.2 billion.
A significant issue about the report is exactly why it took GetUp and communications academics to prepare it, when it’s exactly the sort of report the Australian Communications and Media Authority should be releasing at least annually in order to enable Australians to have an independent look at the media landscape.
Howard was the one to change the laws regarding companies being able to have more than one media outlet, and that was the end of unbiased reporting in Australia. The UK has the same problem caused by “conservative” governments using the old “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” and boy has Morrispin ever scratched Murdoch’s because without news.corp.au he would be out on his ear. It is disgusting that a media owner can turn elections to end up against the best interests of a country. Now the age has gone down that same road to cover the coalition’s arse.
How I miss the days when people entered politics to help make things better for their country, now it’s all about them and their offshore bank accounts and a fatcat job when they lose their seat — even when that should not happen for at least four years after being kicked out. How do these people live with themselves?
I wish the Labor party would put ABC funding high on their agenda. Still the most trusted too I notice.
I support your wish, but were talking about a neutered party, too scared of its own shadow to actually put forward policies that people are crying out for and would win them the next election. They’re just so pathetic it’s sad to watch…
Similar to why there is little public Labor policy push for an ICAC, that would separate them from the LNP ethically and morally, and be a vote winner, but why the reticence?
Maybe the fear of full blown attacks from media etc.?
Says something about how much influence our media now has……
The ALP last election offered voters they would restore around $84 million that the LNP had cut – from their last budget? While surveys show consistently the ABC is our most trusted news source, it didn’t stop voters voting for the LNP.
For many voters, the promise of LNP tax cuts, combined with “I dunno, I just don’t like him (Shorten)” with no specific reasons, was enough.
The ALP have sought to put ABC funding in the actual CAMPAIGN agenda, and got no response from voters. Why would they try again?
Yes, good point.
I wish . . . that ABC board members reconsider why they are there? Any competent Board and/or individual members of that Board that delivered a $1billion loss of revenue overtime should have departed en-masse yesterday. Regardless of political alliance. And given conservative governments perpetrated this appalling ‘crime against the nation’ the entire Board membership should have had no concern what-so-ever in disclosing to every local, regional, state, national and international media outlet throughout the free world, how and why the $1 billion loss eventuated.
Listen to Kevin Rudd on Big Ideas- whilst I, like many, felt let down by mr Rudd, his articulate explanation of the issues around News Corp’s dominance and bias are enlightening. Hence the current Labor philosophy of letting the Coalition destroy themselves rather than fuel a negative campaign by Murdoch.
Still flummoxed as to why or how Murdoch and NewsCorp can avoid being deemed ‘foreign agents’, for that matter C10 (CBS), IPA/CIS (Koch Atlas Networks) etc.?
This is when Australian MPs could be taken down in media, and lose their seat, due to the dredging up of unused, arcane and opaque electoral laws on nebulous ‘automatic’ foreign citizenship (in theory most citizens are eligible for foreign citizenship in many nations now with reduced hurdles; there is no such thing as ‘automatic’, all require applications to be lodged, assessed and approved).
Still too little explanation as to why and how that campaign took off vs. Greens, independents and Labor, first?
If you can’t win the argument shut down the discussion.
John Howard destroyed Australia as a fair go nation, he has put workers and the union movement back 100 years , started the decimation of the ABC and opened the flood gates to the Murdoch nazi propaganda of Australia`s media, when Howard finally meets his maker Satan will put the red carpet out to welcome him home.