The bigger picture 

The political question of how a society's media is organised is one of the central political questions of any modern democracy. The political contest about who owns the press, what the state's role is in broadcasting, who decides what counts as journalism, and what political conditions journalists work under has been continuous across the modern era.

The American political theorist Noam Chomsky documented in detail how the political conditions of mass media in capitalist democracies produce systematic patterns in what gets covered, what gets ignored, and how the framing happens. The political argument was that media concentration, advertiser dependency, and the political conditions of journalists as employees produced predictable political consequences for what ordinary readers and viewers saw and did not see. The argument was developed in the American context but the underlying political dynamics reach Australian media through the same mechanisms.

The American journalist Ben Bagdikian documented across multiple editions of his work how media ownership concentration in the United States moved from dozens of major operators to a handful across the late twentieth century. The same political pattern played out in Australia, with significant local variations. Australia is currently among the most concentrated media markets in the OECD, and that concentration is the legacy of decades of political decisions, not a natural commercial outcome.

The colonial transfer

Australian media inherited British and American political settlements about press, broadcasting, and journalism. The British political tradition of press freedom, modified through colonial conditions, produced the colonial-era newspaper. The American political tradition of commercial broadcasting, transmitted through trade flows and regulatory borrowing, produced the Australian commercial broadcasting settlement. The British political tradition of public broadcasting, transmitted through the establishment of the ABC in 1932, produced the public broadcasting tradition that continues to shape Australian media.

What that political vision excluded is part of the history. First Nations voices were politically excluded from mainstream Australian media for most of the twentieth century. The political project of representing First Nations communities was largely conducted by non-Indigenous journalists working with colonial assumptions, and the political legacy of that exclusion continues to do political work in contemporary media. Aboriginal Community Controlled media, including National Indigenous Television, the Koori Mail, and community radio across the country, are operating as part of the long political work of repair.

Migrant voices were similarly marginal in mainstream Australian media for decades. SBS, established in 1980, was a political achievement of multicultural advocacy and political contest, contested at the time and contested again in successive funding and political moments.

The post-war broadcasting settlement

The post-war political settlement extended the public broadcasting tradition. The political idea that media required public investment, public regulation, and public oversight, alongside commercial operation, was held by both major political parties for most of the post-war period.

The political conditions of journalism as a profession were established through this period. The journalists' union, the political relationship between editors and proprietors, and the political assumption of journalists' independence were all political achievements that took specific forms in Australia. The political legacy of these achievements continues to shape contemporary journalism, even as the conditions that produced them have shifted.

The neoliberal turn and concentration

From the 1980s, a different political settlement began to assert itself. Cross-media ownership rules were progressively loosened. Media concentration accelerated. Public broadcasting funding came under sustained political pressure. The political conditions of journalism as labour were reshaped by award restructuring, the rise of casualisation, and the slow withdrawal of newsrooms from regional Australia.

The shift was a political settlement, contested at the time and contested again now. The political achievement of significant media diversity, of strong regional media presence, and of a substantial public broadcasting sector was significantly unwound across the 1990s and 2000s. The political legacy is the most concentrated media market in the OECD, declining regional coverage, and a journalist workforce that has shrunk by significant numbers across the past two decades.

The platform turn

The political settlement that produced the mass media of the twentieth century has been reshaped by the rise of digital platforms. The political conditions of distribution, audience attention, and advertising revenue have been restructured by Meta, Google, and other platforms operating under political conditions developed in the United States.

The News Media Bargaining Code, legislated in 2021, was an Australian political response to platform power that received significant international attention. The political settlement it produced was contested at the time and continues to be contested. The political question of whether platforms should be regulated as publishers, as utilities, or as something new is unresolved globally and domestically.

The political conversation about disinformation, particularly intensifying since 2016, has reshaped what mainstream media must do. The political conditions of fact-checking, of source verification, and of audience trust have been politically contested in ways that older media political settlements did not anticipate.

The present moment

Generative AI, sustained pressure on public broadcasting, and political backlash against accountability journalism are reshaping media now.

Generative AI arrives as a contested political question for the sector. Whether AI-generated content competes with journalism, whether AI tools can be used in journalistic practice, and whether journalism survives as a distinct human practice, is being negotiated globally with significant Australian implications.

Political pressure on public broadcasting is sustained across multiple political cycles and intensifying through the 2020s. The ABC and SBS both operate inside political conditions that the post-war settlement did not anticipate.

The political backlash against journalism that covers feminist, queer, trans, racial-justice, climate, and First Nations issues reaches journalists through coordinated harassment, defamation pressure, and political attacks on the practice of accountability journalism.