What ends up in the news in part depends on what reporters can do, a former court reporter says.

When a 68-year-old father shot dead his teenage son and daughter at the home where they lived with their mother, media organisations were justifiably transfixed: the cold-blooded killing, described by police as a "planned attack", has horrified readers, viewers and listeners.

But since that calculated crime was committed in West Pennant Hills in Sydney on Thursday, there have been at least three other murders that have received much less attention: a 76-year-old woman in Raymond Terrace in New South Wales, a woman in Cranbourne North in Melbourne, and a woman in Hampton Park, also in south-east Melbourne, have all been murdered in the past few days.

Dr Jill Tomlinson, a researcher on the Counting Dead Women project at feminist organisation Destroy The Joint, says the three murders over the weekend are similar to dozens of cases she comes across each year — cases where a female victim is murdered by a man who knew her, and where there are few details about the crime itself.

"There are many deaths where unfortunately we don't come across the names of the individual, and where the media reports are very short," she told the ABC's daily news podcast The Signal.

"The reports just mention that there was a woman's body that was found outside of somewhere, and somebody is helping the police with their inquiries, and in those circumstances, there will be very few Australians who actually hear of the woman's death, and it doesn't register in the consciousness."

'Reporting shaped by what's achievable'

Paul Bibby, is a freelance journalist and lecturer at Griffith University who used to cover courts for The Sydney Morning Herald, said a big factor in whether murders like those over the weekend were covered was how interested other media outlets were in the stories, what pictures were available, and what other stories beyond court were happening at the same time.

He said media organisations operated with limited resources, and editors prioritised stories that audiences would read and share.

"It's also, I think, a question of just purely what a journalist can manage on that day," he told The Signal.

"With tighter and tighter deadlines and fewer and fewer resources across the news media, a big factor in what's covered is simply sufficing — so simply picking something that I can get done to file by the time I need to file it, and to meet the expectations of my editor or producer."

Mr Bibby also thinks news editors and reporters had a limited interest in some kinds of domestic violence cases because their readers, viewers and listeners found them overwhelming, which might explain why some murders got relatively little coverage.

"I do think that just the immense number — the horrifically large number — of domestic homicides has created a degree of compassion fatigue within newsrooms," Mr Bibby said.

"I think that there is a sense that the problem is just so overwhelming and so relentless.

"And also yes, to some degree, there's a sense of 'it's another domestic homicide, and therefore may not capture the attention of our listeners or readers or viewers, and so we'll pass that one up'."

More coverage of Eurydice Dixon murder than Qi Yu

Since the Destroy The Joint organisation was set up in 2012, it has been collating details of murder cases where women are the victims, and for 2018 its nationwide tally stands at 34.

Dr Tomlinson said the list was built from a combination of media reports, court listings and tip-offs from the public, and said the highest number yet recorded was in 2014, when 84 women were murdered in Australia.

She said since she had been working on the list, there had been some murders of women that had captured the public imagination — like the murder and rape of former ABC employee Jill Meagher in Melbourne in 2012, and the murder and rape of Melbourne comedian Eurydice Dixon last month — but many more that had not.

"I do think we see a lot more coverage of cases like, for example, Eurydice Dixon, than the Chinese woman who died in that same week," Dr Tomlinson said.

"There are obviously reasons that the media will seek to cover one more than the other, but I think if there's anything to come out of the Counting Dead Women project, it's that we need to look at the problem as a whole."

How court reporters decide which crimes to cover

Jamelle Wells is a senior court reporter who has been covering crime for the ABC in Sydney for more than a decade, and she agreed some murders received a lot more coverage than others.

She said each day she discussed with her editors which cases were before court, and said the decision about which cases to cover and how was made pragmatically.

"Who, what, when, where, how, what else is happening on the day, whether there are a lot of victims involved, whether the person has a public profile, whether the circumstances of the cases were particularly gruesome — I don't think it's any different to the general principles we apply to news," she said.

But Wells added television in particular could be a difficult platform for stories involving murder victims killed in their own home by men who knew them.

"A lot of Family Court matters, sexual assault matters — we just can't name the people," she said.

"Also, I can write an online or a radio story about those sorts of cases, but for TV that's very hard because there are no pictures.

"Covering courts is picture-challenged anyway — that's why we hang around outside courts trying to get pictures of the judge or the lawyers or the accused — but really, it's no pictures, no story."

Wells said she tried to cover particularly gruesome family violence cases for the ABC website and for ABC radio when possible, even if she could not convince television editors to run the stories on the nightly news.

But even then, she said it could be difficult to cover some kinds of murders because the details were simply too graphic to relay in full.

"I am currently covering a case about people who I can't name — it's a man who is on trial for setting his wife on fire, so lighting a fire in her bedroom and not letting her get out so that she'd burn to death," she said.

"Now in that case, I have heard recently in court a triple-0 phone call that that woman made as she was dying, and all I could hear was her screaming and gasping towards the last minutes of her life.

"So it's a case of extreme violence against women that I have been able to report on without naming people, but things like that call are just too awful to put to air."

'Reporters, audiences both need to change'

Asked what could be done to increase coverage of domestic homicides and family violence, Mr Bibby said it was a difficult question to answer, but thought any change would need to come simultaneously from reporters and from their audiences.

"It definitely starts with the reporter on the ground making it a priority to let the editor or producer know, and saying 'I think that we should cover this'," he said.