Somewhere in Australia, a family starts everyday surrounded by news.
In the lounge room, a television anchor debates national policy. At the breakfast table, a father scrolls through headlines on his news app. Still in bed, a teenager catches seconds of political commentary on TikTok in-between makeup tutorials and the latest footy updates.
It feels like media diversity. Different voices. Different platforms. Different opinions.
Yet increasingly, this word ‘different’ becomes the same.
Australians have lost trust in traditional reporting as concentrated ownership continues to blur the line between journalism, politics and corporate interest.
However, turning away from traditional outlets and towards social media has created a misinformation crisis.
The illusion of choice means we all consume different outlets but they lead us into the same echo chamber: ‘I am right and you are wrong.’
The result? Journalism is left with fractures and solutions are elusive.
Concentrated Media Ownership
The concentrated ownership of Australian media is “amongst the worst in the Western world,” according to Andrew Dodd, Director for the centre of Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne.
Daily, corporate players like Nine Entertainment and News Corp continue to absorb smaller news outlets and reshape public discourse.
“The main issue that works against journalists is concentrated media,” said Nine News journalist and presenter, Brett McLeod.
Yet, this corporate race to news domination is less about dedication to ‘saving’ legacy media outlets from financial peril, but rather an act of self-preservation.
“It is a case of having to become a bigger shark, to not get eaten by the other sharks,” McLeod said.
In 2017, the passing of the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Bill allowed major metropolitan television networks to merge with regional networks and eventually acquire larger newspaper groups to grow profit.
As a result, we see a narrowing of diverse voices and an increase in repetition through story coverage.
“We’ve lost quite a degree of plurality in our media over the last four or five decades, and we’re lacking a diversity of viewpoints,” Dodd said.
As the public discovers the impact of this highly concentrated ownership, trust towards truthful reporting within traditional news outlets has seen a decline.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) states that distrust in news amongst Australians increased from 27 per cent in 2021 to 32 per cent in 2025.
But untrustworthiness does not only exist amongst traditional outlets.
Platformisation of Journalism
Growing distrust towards legacy media outlets has now fostered a migration to digital platforms.
The University of Canberra’s Digital News Report 2025 cites 1 in 4 Australians primarily consume news through social media.
That’s roughly 7 million people out of the 27.7 million Australian population choosing to bypass traditional reporting.
But this decentralised alternative does not solve our democratic media crisis; instead, it creates them.
The conventions of social media seem like a great way to promote democratisation:
- Anyone can publish
- Anyone can target a specific audience
- Corporations can no longer dominate public conversation
At first glance, these open platforms feel revolutionary.
“Social media was great because everyone can be a publisher” Mcleod said. “But now people are getting better at seeming more trustworthy, and that’s very destructive.”
So now, there is a shift. The core issue is not who owns the news; it’s who and WHAT controls visibility.
Algorithms have taken charge of shaping public understanding in ways newspaper editors once did, operating within society without obligation to be transparent.
The content we see is not prioritised because it is accurate or socially valuable, but because it provokes a reaction.
Emotion-evoking content creates a divide where audiences are either increasingly exposed to information that confirms their personal beliefs, or inflames their outrage against opposing opinions.
“We’re being exposed to the very thing we oppose, but not to give us enlightenment, to get us angry and to get us clicking,” Dodd said.
As a result, the content Australia consumes is entirely economically driven, where inflammatory headlines spread further than measured reporting and misinformation remains pervasive and quick, compared to corrections and fact-checking.
“It’s about winning arguments rather than raising consciousness or awareness or empathy or understanding,” Dodd said.
This problem is heightened by the paradox that digital platforms rely upon journalism whilst simultaneously undermining the business model that funds it.
Do you ever wonder where ‘influencers’ get information from?
Well, it comes from credible journalists who have already put in the work to collect and verify their story.
“These platforms themselves don’t produce that content. They’re relying upon those who produce that journalism,” said Derek Wilding from the Centre for Media transition at the University of Technology Sydney.
A Solution
Is there a solution to this dual censorship across news platforms?
Well, it certainly isn’t the act of deciding which of these mediums is best, nor is it the abolition of one or the other.
Media scholar Denis Muller (2021) notes that the future of a functional public sphere rests on ensuring that anyone acting as a reporter or information-sharer is properly trained to navigate professional boundaries.
To do this, networks like the ABC and SBS that prioritise ethical conventions over commercial or algorithmic profit margins should be preserved.
“It is reassuring for the future that trust in these outlets remains high,” Wilding said.
Australians are loyal to these outlets as they have the most developed media standards and accountability systems.
So, in order to resolve the ownership crisis, there needs to be a systemic policy transformation to all platforms.
If independent creators are given the platforms and funding to upload content they wish under the benefits of the News Media Bargaining Code, they should be legally required to abide by regulations of an independent standards body.
As opposed to multiple different organisations such as ACMA and the Australian Press Council regulating the content we see, the development of an independent scheme where communities actively monitor and judge media behaviour could be extremely beneficial.
Yet, structural re-building only solves half of the problem. There must also be investment put towards education into the ethical conventions of journalistic practice.
Scholars Frank Esser and Christoph Neuberger emphasise that understanding the democratic functions of journalism in this digital age requires a quite literal “return to old values.”
This means actively engaging society with standard practices of journalism: Fact-checking, declaring conflicts of interest, privacy issues, and gaining rights to publish before just anything can go out into the public.
Because regardless of the fragmentation, the distrust, and ‘doom-scrolling’, society still finds themselves craving something ‘old-fashioned.’
The truth.
And in an ecosystem where everyone is battling for attention, it is, in fact, the truth, that is the most difficult story to tell.
