Most journalists working for leftist publications in Australia are paid by the Government. By George Christensen at Confidential Daily.
The next time you read a political story from Nine, Seven, Crikey, The Conversation, The Saturday Paper, Mamamia or any of the scores of other outlets taking part in Labor’s latest media scheme, there is something you may not be told.
The Federal Government is likely to be paying the journalist who wrote it. …
Through the Journalism Assistance Fund, the Albanese Government is handing out $67.6 million to publishers across the country. Successful applicants receive $39,000 for each eligible full-time journalist over three years, with payments continuing until 2028. …
More than 2,000 journalists are reportedly covered by the program across 184 private newsrooms. The money has not only gone to small rural papers battling to keep a reporter on staff. Some of the largest and most powerful media companies in the country are among the biggest beneficiaries.
Fairfax Media Limited, part of the Nine group, received more than $8.1 million.
Nine Entertainment [owner of the SMH and Melbourne’s Age] received another grant of almost $8 million.
Seven Network received about $5.6 million, while West Australian Newspapers received more than $4 million. …
These are companies with national television networks, major newspapers, large political bureaus, wealthy shareholders, and direct access to the most powerful people in Canberra.
They are also the organisations that regularly lecture everyone else about conflicts of interest. …
An extraordinary conflict of interest:
There is something badly wrong with a government helping to pay the wages of the very people meant to scrutinise it. …
There is no requirement for funded newsrooms to tell their readers.
A reporter can write about Anthony Albanese, Communications Minister Anika Wells, the Labor Government, the public service, or the department administering the money without a single line disclosing that the publication receives government support for journalists’ wages. …
Imagine a lobby group publishing a favourable report about a company that helps pay its staff. Every serious newsroom in the country would demand a disclosure. If a researcher received money from an industry body, that fact would be mentioned prominently. Politicians are expected to declare gifts, donations, and financial interests.
Yet a newsroom taking millions from the government can publish political coverage without telling the audience a thing.
Andrew Bolt has called for every taxpayer-subsidised journalist to disclose the arrangement at the bottom of each article. He is right.
Influence and bias:
That does not mean every journalist taking part in the scheme has suddenly become a Labor propagandist. Most probably have not changed their reporting at all. Plenty will insist, with some justification, that no minister has ever rung them and told them what to write.
But influence does not usually work through a phone call from the minister’s office.
It works through dependency.
Editors know the company is receiving government money. Executives know the payments continue for years. Management knows future programs will be designed in Canberra. Everyone knows the industry is lobbying for more assistance as advertising revenue collapses.
No one needs to bark an order. The financial relationship is sitting there in the background. And it matters.
It matters when an editor is deciding how aggressively to pursue a government scandal. It matters when a proprietor is deciding whether to pick a fight with a minister. It matters when newsroom jobs are tied, even partly, to funding controlled by the same political system those journalists are meant to investigate. …
Canberra defines journalism, decides which publishers qualify, assesses their paperwork, approves their progress reports, and keeps the money flowing. …
Oh, how convenient:
Indeed, the rules produced a very politically convenient result for the government.
News Corp’s Australian publications, and Sky News Australia were unable to apply because the scheme excluded foreign-controlled companies.
The big list of publications paid by the Government is here (scroll down under the article).
It’s hilarious watching the ‘morally pure’ leftwing media defend using taxpayer money to keep their failing publications alive while the conservative press have to survive in the free market of ideas with subscription services.
Yet another mechanism by which the left ends up owning nearly every opinion-making institution in the country — especially universities and the ABC/SBS — just by funding them with your taxes, administered by the left-leaning bureaucracy.