Media freedom is a hot topic this week, with the release of Reporters Without Borders’ annual World Press Freedom report. Australia has dropped back to 39th place, which it occupied in 2022, after climbing to 27th last year. The overall trend, troublingly, is downwards: Australia was ranked 21st in 2019. This week, Ayesha explores some of the recent context that may be driving the dive.
Israel took steps this week which may further damage its already-low ranking of 101, raiding and suspending Al Jazeera’s operations. Monica investigates the risk to Israel’s democratic legitimacy.
The media-policy debate in Australia is often reluctant to embrace discussion of subsidies, tax measures, and other government-driven funding proposals. In part this is due to concern over the risk to media freedom stemming from potential political influence. But as Tim explains, research suggests that, in addition to the wide range of social goods that media subsidies can promote, a well-supported media system is less prone to influence than a struggling one.
Sacha and Derek have been hard at work on a systematic review of media-standards schemes around the world. This week, we published a table summarising Denmark’s scheme. This will be followed by accounts of other countries’ approaches, as well as a report, all with a view to gaining a better perspective on how to reform Australia’s fragmented, inadequate system of news-media oversight.
Meanwhile, Sacha dives into the legal and ethical issues raised by Peter Stefanovic’s own-goal in his interview with prizewinning fisherman Keegan Payne. While the law constrains discussion of current court cases or spent convictions, no such limitation applies to acquittals or allegations where no charges are laid. A legal void does not, of course, legitimise an ethical void, especially when it involves the gratuitous victimisation of a young Indigenous man.
Finally, given the interest in the government’s stalled Combatting Disinformation and Misinformation bill that has arisen in the wake of the Sydney stabbings, it is worth noting the European Commission’s opening of proceedings last week against Meta. These relate to a range of alleged breaches of the Digital Services Act (DSA), including a lack of effective monitoring and flagging tools and inadequate complaint and redress mechanisms, and follow the EC’s March guidance to platforms on the mitigation of systemic risks for electoral processes. The EC will also examine whether Meta is adequately addressing the dissemination of deceptive advertisements, disinformation and other coordinated inauthentic behaviour, and whether the demotion of political content threatens access to trustworthy information and news.
The proceedings demonstrate a focus – enabled by the DSA framework – on Meta’s systems and processes, rather than a concern with determining whether particular content is or is not disinformation or misinformation. In our submission on the Australian bill, we argued that despite the government’s express intention to focus on platform processes, the bill hinders that by awkwardly framing its scope around included and excluded content, limiting its effectiveness as a mechanism for promoting platform accountability. Whether the government heeds that lesson remains to be seen.
Michael Davis, CMT Postdoctoral Fellow