Senate journalism committee calls for media tax benefits and law reform while ducking tech giants’ role
Tax breaks for subscriptions to reputable news organisations, along with reviews of defamation and national security laws are key recommendations of the Senate’s Future of Public Interest Journalism inquiry.
However, the committee made no recommendations on how to manage challenges from Facebook and Google, citing insufficient evidence of the tech giants’ influence on the local media sector.
The Senate inquiry began in May
The Senate Inquiry, which commenced on May 10 last year, aimed to look at the state of public interest journalism, the adequacy of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s regulation and the impact search engines and social media has on the sector.
It also reviewed the future of public and community broadcasters’ role in delivering journalism.
Recommendations include adequate funding for ABC and SBS so they can deliver on ‘charter obligations’ and support regional areas, assurance of future funding for community broadcasting sector beyond the government’s forward estimates and an audit of current laws which impact journalists reporting on areas such as national security and border protection.
Another recommendation calls on the Treasury to look at extending tax deductible status of subscriptions to news media organisations which ‘adhere to appropriate standards of practice for public interest journalism’ for all Australians.
The committee has also called for a review of defamation laws to ensure there is an appropriate balance between public interest journalism and protection of individuals, as well as a way to extend whistleblower and shield law protections.
Meanwhile, criticisms of Google and Facebook are “discussed briefly” on page 64 of the report.
The committee expressed concerns over claims Google and Facebook may have abused market power over the media sector.
It made reference to News Corp executive chairman Michael Miller’s comments which appeared in the Australian Financial Review: “Making quality subscription news publishers suffer in search rankings unless they give Google and its search users content for free; displaying snippets of publishers’ content in Google News listings to attract eyeballs which fund its advertising revenue and to discourage users seeking out content elsewhere; manipulating search results to promote its own news vertical.”
But the committee made no recommendations regarding these allegations for the following reasons: “Firstly, the committee did not receive sufficient volume of evidence in these areas to reach any definitive conclusions. Secondly, over the course of this inquiry, the government directed the ACCC to undertake an inquiry into aggregators and social media platforms, including Google and Facebook, and potential negative or unfair effects on consumers, media content creators-including journalists, and advertisers,” the report said.
“The ACCC inquiry has broader terms of reference than this committee, as well as the resources, expertise and time to consider these matters in full, before it presents its final findings to government in mid-2019.”
Google refuted claims of abusing market power and demanding publishing adopt the ‘First Click Free’ changes, in August last year.
Google’s Jason Pellegrino told the inquiry that quality journalism was a matter of “vital public interest.”
But the recommendations put forward by the Senate committee were disputed by some Coalition senators.
The coalition senators – who “were skeptical about the value of yet another inquiry in Australia’s media landscape” at the time of its announcement – said the media reform package, which passed in September, would have a “meaningful and beneficial effect on public interest journalism.”
The media reforms include an abolishment of licence fees for commercial broadcasters, repeal of the two out of three ownership rule, a $604.5m jobs and innovation package for regional and small publishers, adequate funding to ABC, SBS and additional funding to community radio broadcasters.
But the Coalition Senators said they found it hard to take seriously any concerns expressed by Labor and Green Senators around public interest journalism, in light of their obstructions to elements of the media reforms bill.
“Some of the ideas considered in the report, such as a new and vaguely defined Commonwealth body to offer direct financial support for journalism, are fraught with danger and could radically change the relationship between government and independent media. Coalition Senators strongly oppose this concept and the unorthodox proposal to fund this body with a new tax on content aggregators such as Facebook and Google,” additional comments from Coalition Senators said.
“Coalition Senators are open to encouraging philanthropic investment in not for profit journalism through the tax system, while noting commercial media outlets are, and will likely remain, the mainstay of news gathering and investigation in Australia.”
While the Senate agreed on an Australia Law Reform Commission audit, it said defamation laws were primarily a state government responsibility. They also said the Committee’s deliberations “bore little relationship” to the objective of the industry.
“Whilst Labor and Greens Senators spend their time grandstanding, Coalition Senators supported the Government’s actions to preserve and enhance public interest journalism in Australia.”
topics
Facebook
Future of Journalism
Google
media reform
Senate Inquiry into Public Interest Journalism
I wonder who will be the adjudicator of who gets the gong to be on the list of reputable media outlets. . If it’s a bunch of people on a Committee you bet it will be creepingly dominated by the left Would ACA on Channel 9 (although not subscription) be considered reputable public journalism? Of course, it does but probably wouldn’t make the cut by a typical Qangos Committee.
As for Google, The Committee did the right thing up to a point. Google is just another “web based” newsagent chain. Australia was served for over 100 years by the Google equivalent being the 4,000 odd newsagents who displayed virtually all regularly published print. They took a 25% cut of RRP, and returned remainder and got a credit for it, making the newsagent chain for the hundreds of magazines on display, a net cost of at least 25-30+ of cover revenues for publishers. What Goggle should be crimped on, is repurposing material without publisher approval either by their audience or directly scraped by Facebook or Google. Australian Media protection from Google/Facebook et al only requires a strengthening of copyright and repurposing laws. Any legislation should make the control of content easily enforceable in a timely, and cost efficient manner.
Where the money for journalism –sitting is wasted and incorrectly spent (geographically where needed) buy the ABC and SBS. Overall, the question of the ABC/SBS is hardly easy. They are, in a democracy, not something a Government should own or be involved in. However at a minimum the Committee should have recommended that to liberate monies from their budgets (c38% in FY17 of the 3 FTA network budgets) a form of anti syphoning be required of these two bodies that they not compete with taxpayers fund against the FTA networks for overseas programming. All first rights to show overseas programming should be first bid only to the FTA’s. Only that which FTA’s don’t buy, should then be bid for by a joint ABC/SBS buying agency. This ensures that where the networks are willing to spend their viewers’ ad dollars on overseas programs, the ABC/SBS do not compete with tax payer dollars. The budgets savings for ABC/SBS should then be reinvested in regional and national Australian media content –whether journalism, entertainment or infortainment.
The regional areas of Australia are starved for content and journalism befitting their population and contribution to national exports, and weight in the Australian economy. 35% of the population live in regional areas, yet TV ad spend is only 20-22% of the FTA pool and on 2013 ACMA data, regional TV only has dollars left to spend of c10% of FTA national news budgets. This 35/22/10 waterfall is something the ABC/SBS budgets should address by way of quality local journalism. It would be better to split the ABC into metro and regional operations with the regional HQ in say Toowoomba to ensure the “togetherness” with regional outlooks are embedded in the management structure.
I note that overseas programming spend is not detailed in either the ABC or SBS annual reports, however overseas time based content is. SBS overseas programming is well over 40% rising to the high 90’s for their food network. We don’t need taxpayers money spent on this when Australian journalists are being sacked left right and centre. What’s the use of supporting Screen Australia if the ABC/SBS spend an undisclosed amount supporting overseas product?
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