Australia’s increasingly concentrated and shrinking media landscape, online disinformation, government secrecy and overwhelmingly white newsrooms are all real threats to media diversity, a parliamentary inquiry has heard.
The Senate's inquiry on media diversity in Australia, established by Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young last November, came on the back of former prime minister Kevin Rudd’s petition calling for a royal commission into the influence of News Corp. It gathered over 500,000 signatures.
With incredibly broad terms of reference, the inquiry aims to tackle everything from the state of public interest journalism and the effect of media concentration on democracy, to the impact of Google, Facebook and other tech giants. Submissions closed in December, with 65 contributions from media companies, regulators and community groups.
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