The Failure of the Australian News Media Bargaining Code

The next speaker in this session at IAMCR 2023 is Benedetta Brevini, reflecting on the Australian experience with its News Media Bargaining Code. This was prompted by the crisis of journalism (and journalism funding) in the country, producing news deserts especially at local levels outside the largest cities. Some 5,000 news jobs were lost over the past two decades.

The NMBC was an attempt to address this through policy intervention, and in line with other moves towards rebalancing bargaining powers between Big Tech and news organisations – for instance also at the EU level. The NMBC was introduced in late 2020 and became law in 2021, yet in spite of the major crisis in local journalism in Australia had negligible effect on this crisis. Australian journalism remains dominated by two major news organisations (News Corporation and Nine Entertainment), and both gained some additional bargaining powers through the NMBC, but this does not produce any support for new news start-ups or other innovative solutions.

To date, some 30 commercial agreements have been made between Big Tech and Australian news organisations, but there is a complete lack of transparency about what these agreements entail; some more transparent organisations (ABC, Guardian Australia) have said that the new funding has supported their hiring of additional journalists, but we know nothing about how this played out in other organisations, and the NMBC does not require any investment of funds in journalism (or specific areas of journalism, such as local news. Similarly, Big Tech organisations are already using the current economic conditions as a reason to gradually pull back again from these arrangements.