The Power of News Agencies over Journalism

Brisbane.
The final speaker in this ANZCA 2009 session is Jane Johnston, whose interest is in the economy of news agencies - and she begins with a couple of hoax press releases which were converted into mainstream news stories by the Australian-based press agency AAP. Such stories were widely published by a number of Australian mainstream online news sites and newspapers.

This is great success for the press release writers, but it was conversion into stories by the AAP which created such wide coverage; it highlights the role of press agencies, and points to the near-monopoly of the AAP as a news agency in Australia.

Susan Forde now takes over, and describes this as a key question for the Australian media industry: does the media system serve to promote or undermine democratic institutions and practices? Does it enhance democracy? International studies, too, have pointed to the dominance of news agencies in the coverage of news stories; AP and Reuters are now global market leaders and have essentially formed a de facto duopoly.

A similar situation applies in Australia - News and Fairfax have a majority ownership of the agency, and through this have a stranglehold on the news agenda; AAP was cited as the most frequently used source by Australian news producers - indeed, commercial news producers sometimes use AAP news straight from the wire (and without attribution), in a clear indication of their view of it as a trustworthy news source. If press releases are converted into AAP news stories, then, they clearly 'become news'. Jane's study of a commercial FM radio station has found that some 61% of its news stories were taken straight from AAP (overall, 89% were sourced direct from other media), for example.

This has been described by Nick Davies as 'churnalism' - and it also highlights the potential for the reuse and redistribution of errors (and there are several examples of this - for example the manipulation of Reuters-distributed press image of a bombing in Lebanon, which was subsequently highlighted by a blogger). Such misreporting is very difficult to correct after the fact, of course.

There is a need for further research here, especially in Australia - for example to track the use of verbatim or remodelled news from AAP wires; to study the production processes for news within AAP, including journalist training, sources, and gatekeeping practices; to examine the news media's perceptions of AAP as a source of news (indeed as the only legitimate Australian news wire); and to apply political economy frameworks to this analysis.

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