If there was an award for the most parliamentary inquiries leading precisely nowhere, the plethora of handwringing investigations into the future of journalism over the last decade would have to take the gong.

There was the fuss in the dying months of the Gillard government in which then communications minister Stephen Conroy tried to push forward more ethical regulation of journalism, to howls of outrage from everyone in the media.

There was the 2016 exercise when a Senate committee looked in to journalism as part of proposed changes to media ownership legislation. A Groundhog Day exercise if ever there was one.

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Most recently, on the fifth of this month, the report of the Senate select committee into the future of public interest journalism was released and almost totally ignored. This latter committee is a bit of a zombie, dead before it even reported. All three of the senators who were behind its establishment – Labor’s Sam Dastyari, Nick Xenophon and the Greens Scott Ludlam – are now out of the picture.

This, combined with the reflex hostility of the government to the committee’s existence, let alone its findings, guarantees its recommendations will be ignored, just like those of its predecessors.



Given this woeful history, it’s reasonable to ask why the issue of the future of journalism keeps being investigated, and why so little action results.

The answers to both questions are pretty obvious. Journalism is important. All of these committees have parroted the truism that news media and democracy go together. Damage journalism and you damage our ability to be well governed. So why no action? Because the measures that might be taken by governments involve a fundamental shift in thinking. They also raise potent issues about independence and freedom of the media.

About 3,000 journalists have lost their jobs over the last five years in Australia

For most of my career, it has been a given that the very last people who should be involved in deciding the future of journalism are the politicians who are on the end of its barbs.

But everything is changing. Media is the fastest changing industry on the planet. News media used to be a relatively simple business. Provide news, commentary and analysis to draw an audience. Sell the attention of that audience to advertisers. Make money.

Everything in that equation has changed fast. Over the last decade the business model that supports most journalism has come unstuck. On best estimates, about 3,000 journalists have lost their jobs over the last five years in Australia. Digital advertising revenue, never as big an earner for news media as old-fashioned ads, now flows overwhelmingly to Google and Facebook without a single journalist’s salary being paid. So where are we at, after all this inquiring and so little action?

The political fixes

The negotiations over the most recent changes to media ownership legislation did result in a small sop to Xenophon. We have a regional and small publishers cadetship program and a regional and small publishers’ innovation package designed to support training for journalists and innovation in the industry, with an emphasis on regional Australia.

The amounts of money are small, the process and the outcomes of setting them up was politically compromised (not least in the stiffing of Guardian Australia) So far nothing has been rolled out. The bureaucrats told the recent Senate committee the first cadetships would be offered in the next financial year, and the guidelines for the innovation fund “are currently being developed”.

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Its easy to be cynical. At the same time as these piecemeal and dysfunctional efforts are made, the Turnbull government has continued the trend of introducing legislation that could undermine freedom of the press and see journalists jailed for doing their jobs.

Yet despite my pessimistic tone so far, there are some significant shifts over the last few years that are worth noting. I suspect they will be significant as the crisis in news media continues.

First, despite its paltry nature, the cadetship program and innovation fund establishes a precedent of government support for news media other than through funding for the public broadcasters. We might see in this the glimmerings of concern for news media as a vital part of cultural industries.

Second, an idea that was ridiculed just two years ago has become mainstream, and indeed has close to bipartisan support. That idea is that not-for-profit public interest journalism enterprises should be able to receive philanthropic donations, and the donor should be able to get a tax deduction – similar to registered charities.

This idea was floated in the 2016 inquiry, and ridiculed. Yet in the submissions to the most recent inquiry even the fiercely free market-oriented Institute for Public Affairs grudgingly admitted it had merit.

The Liberal senators on the committee appended to the report a few pages of narky comments (waste of resource, substance-free, blah blahdy blah) yet conceded that they were “open” to the idea of encouraging philanthropic investment in not for profit journalism through the tax system. This may seem like small beer but in the US not-for-profit philanthropically supported journalism outlets have become some of the best sources of investigative journalism, which is then often copublished in mainstream media outlets. Over time, tax deductibility for gifts to journalism could mean a significant change to our own news ecologies.

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Another recommendation of the committee was that ordinary taxpayers should be able to claim a tax deduction for the price of subscribing to news media outlets. That would surely help, particularly given the new importance of the audience in funding news media, about which more later.

The acceptance of these ideas – their move from being roundly mocked to broadly accepted – suggests a serious attempt to get them implemented might soon be successful. The other recommendations of the recent committee suggest “adequate” funding for the public broadcasters (whatever that means) training in media literacy in schools and an audit of legislation that infringes on freedom of speech. All good ideas, but don’t hold your breath. The zombie committee is, in fact, dead.

Other ideas remain too hard, at least for now. These include the suggestion that the media behemoths of Google and Facebook should be taxed or levied to fund moves to support journalism.

The committee considered various ideas of this sort, but did not recommend them.

I think that as the crisis in news media deepens, these ideas might also become respectable. All sides of politics accept that commercial broadcasters should produce and screen Australian content, and there are regulations to make them do so. This is because Australian content is seen as culturally important.

Journalism is surely one of the most important kinds of cultural content. Why is it radical to suggest that the new international titans of commercial media, earning rivers of gold from Australian citizens consuming Australian news, should also be forced to contribute to the culture?

The new business model

There are other straws in the wind, some of them emerging in submissions and evidence to the committee. First, News Corp reported that some of that company’s publications now draw more than half of their revenue from readers, in the forms of digital subscriptions. Meanwhile, the Guardian’s international parent has been phenomenally successful with its appeals to readers to donate to support its journalism. There, too, about half of revenue now comes direct from readers, and the Guardian is moving from losing money fast a few years ago to being on track to break even next year.

For as long as I have been in journalism it has been a truism that subscriptions accounted for only a small amount of revenue, with the bulk – about 80% for a typical newspaper – coming from advertisers. That gave advertisers the whip hand in the media game.

The move to close to a 50-50 model, if it persists, is a fundamental change in the economics of journalism, and it means the audience has unprecedented consumer power. This brings with it, of course, an intensified obligation to serve the public rather than the advertisers or other special interests, or indeed the egos of the journalists.

In this context it may be that ideas about ethical regulation of journalism that were sneered at only a short while ago may, over time, get traction. How issues of editorial independence and press freedom are to be balanced with that is a thorny and vitally important issue.

Neither side of politics has given any apparent thought to what a modern, fit-for-purpose system of media regulation might look like

Another straw in the wind. Too many media commentators – often those who are too old and set in their ways to be big users of social media – readily spread the view that social media is bad because it creates “filter bubbles” in which people are never confronted with views with which they disagree.

The evidence for this has always been shaky, but in a submission to the recent inquiry, the excellent news and media research centre at the University of Canberra presented research that suggests the reverse is true. Those who consume most of their news through social media are, it found, more likely to consume a wider range of news and views than those who straight to the website of conventional news media outlets.

Will this happy fact remain the case, though? Here we get into questions about what modern media regulation might look like. Which news and views pop up in our social media feeds is determined by algorithms that are completely opaque. We are powerless before the behemoths of Google and Facebook.

A modern system of media regulation might impose some transparency here – forcing Google and Facebook to disclose. This would take an international lawmaking effort but that is not impossible.

It’s been done before with copyright. Meanwhile the crisis continues. PricewaterhouseCoopers told the inquiry its research showed media revenues would continue to fall in the next few years and that “that the ongoing shift of income away from news-generating media means there will be continued cost-cutting, particularly to areas that are harder to monetise like quality journalism”.

Overseas other governments are taking action. The British prime minister, Theresa May has, announced a press review to look at ways of injecting funds into the failing business model of journalism. Canada is also considering a range of measures. Many European governments have already taken action to support news media

What hope for Australia? The history of media policy in this country doesn’t give much cause for optimism. In fact, it’s a long while since anything worth of the name “media policy” has been sighted on either side of politics.

We have had two competing NBN policies, and we have had a lot of grab bag attempts to appease the now fading or departed emperors of media by removing laws that prevent them owning more.

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The emphasis has been on removing regulations, but neither side of politics has given any apparent thought to what a modern, fit-for-purpose system of media regulation might look like, let alone what enlightened industry policy is needed to ensure that the bedrock of democracy – an informed citizenry – survives into the future.

• Margaret Simons is an associate professor in journalism at Monash University She is also a member of a number of bodies concerned with the issues canvassed here. She made submissions to most of the inquiries mentioned and appeared before, and was co-author of two submissions to, the Senate select committee on the future of public interest journalism

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