‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’—Australian media industry attitudes to regulation and accountability reforms

Abstract

When the Australian Independent Media Inquiry (IMI) published its report most mainstream media reporting focused on the suggested statutory-based News Media Council and largely ignored any discussion of the underlying issues—public trust in journalism and news media and accountability for its practices. The aim of this study was to capture the attitudes held by the media industry toward these issues. Based on a content analysis of 33 submissions to the IMI and the Convergence Review it can be concluded that only 15 percent of the submissions addressed trust or media accountability issues. Furthermore, the submissions illustrate a disconnect between the attitudes held by some media proprietors and the trust deficit reality displayed in multiple studies of the public’s attitudes to journalism and news media.

Keywords

• Australia
• Convergence Review
• Digital convergence
• Finkelstein Inquiry
• Media accountability
• Media regulation