Category Archives: Australian media

Facebook blocks Australian users and publishers from viewing or sharing news

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Company says it has made decision ‘with a heavy heart’ in response to proposed media bargaining code

Facebook has followed through on its threat to ban Australians from seeing or posting news content on its site in response to the federal government’s news media code.

The tech giant’s Australian and New Zealand managing director, Will Easton, said this it would block links to Australian publishers from being posted, while all Australian users would not be able to share or see content from any news outlets, both Australian and internation.

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Google and Facebook: the landmark Australian law that will make them pay for news content

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Despite protestations from both companies, the Australian parliament is set to pass legislation it says is needed to boost public interest journalism

The Australian parliament is poised to pass a landmark media law that would make Google and Facebook pay news publishers for displaying their content.

The Australian law is separate to a deal Facebook made to pay mainstream UK news outlets millions of pounds a year to license their articles, but has a similar motivation.

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Australia politics live: Daniel Andrews gives press conference update on Victoria cases; jobseeker in spotlight as parliament returns

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Pressure mounts for Coalition to announce a permanent increase to unemployment payment; Australia closes quarantine-free border to New Zealand after coronavirus cases confirmed as UK variant. Follow all the latest news and updates, live

• Victoria Covid hotspots

NSW has recorded no new locally acquired cases - or any cases in hotel quarantine.

So another zero day for NSW

Daniel Andrews:

Again, the types of cases, this UK strain, the fact that despite the amazing efforts of all of our contact traces and testers and lab workers and the work of so many genuine hard-working Victorians, we had a situation where at the same time as we are becoming aware of the primary case, they have already infected their close contacts, that is not something we’ve seen before.

The speed at which this has moved saw our public health team make the very difficult decisions based on the best of science and the best understanding you can possibly have on any outbreak, that this was a difficult but proportionate and necessary thing to do.

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Pell contempt case: journalists under scrutiny after 27 charged over verdict’s coverage

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Two journalists with decades of experience gave evidence this week in the supreme court trial of 27 media companies, reporters and editors

It did not take long for word to reach Australian newsrooms: at 3.44pm on 11 December 2018, a jury found George Pell guilty of child sexual abuse.

But the verdict was treated quite differently to other significant breaking news stories, which would usually spark a fevered rush to publish.

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Important stories hidden in Google’s ‘experiment’ blocking Australian news sites

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The search giant’s experiments see sources of questionable quality being promoted over mainstream websites in some cases

Google’s “experiment” in Australia to remove major news sites from search results is hiding important news stories from hundreds of thousands of Australians.

In some cases filtering out mainstream news publications from search results is also resulting in lower-quality publications being promoted, including a news website known for spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories.

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‘Inevitable’ Google and Facebook will pay for Australian news, treasurer says

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Josh Frydenberg says tech companies’ threats to pull services out of Australia did them a ‘big disservice’

Josh Frydenberg has warned the internet giants it is “inevitable” they will pay for news content and their threats to shut down core functions in Australia do them a “big disservice”.

At a doorstop on Sunday, the treasurer said the Morrison’s government intended to become a “world leader” in regulating social media and search companies, who he accused of shifting the goalposts in their opposition to the proposed bargaining code of conduct.

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What are my options if Google shuts down search in Australia?

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Losing Google search might be a shock. But there are plenty of alternatives to choose from

Google has threatened to “stop providing search” in Australia if the federal government continues with a new code to force big digital platforms to pay for displaying local news content. Google has confirmed that this wouldn’t affect any of the company’s other services, such as YouTube, Gmail or Google drive.

The threat came as Google’s Australian managing director, Mel Silva, told a Senate committee the new code would “would set an untenable precedent” and create an “unmanageable financial and operational risk” if it were to become law.

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Google threatens to leave Australia – but its poker face is slipping

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Analysis: tech firm’s refusal to pay news publishers comes as it agrees to do exactly that in France

The biggest companies in technology love an ultimatum but rarely do they spell out their threats. This week, however, Google has done exactly that, telling an Australian parliamentary hearing that a proposed law forcing the company to pay news publishers for the right to link to their content “would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia”.

The threat, from the company’s Australian managing director, Mel Silva, is the latest escalation in a war of words over the proposal, which seeks to undo some of the damage online business models have dealt to the country’s publishing industry.

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Google threatens to shut down search in Australia if digital news code goes ahead

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Google and Facebook are fighting legislation that would force them to enter into negotiations with news media companies for payment for content

Google has threatened to remove its search engine from Australia and Facebook has threatened to remove news from its feed for all Australian users if a code forcing the companies to negotiate payments to news media companies goes ahead.

The move would mean the 19 million Australians who use Google every month would no longer be able to use Google Search, and 17 million Australians who log into Facebook every month would not be able to see or post any news articles on the social media site.

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ABC chair Ita Buttrose accuses government of ‘political interference’ in draft letter to Paul Fletcher

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Exclusive: Buttrose mounts robust defence of broadcaster’s independence in response to questions about Four Corners’ episode Inside the Canberra Bubble

The ABC chair, Ita Buttrose, has accused the government of a pattern of behaviour which “smacks of political interference” in a robust defence of the public broadcaster’s independence, according to a draft of a letter responding to a barrage of Coalition complaints about the Four Corners program Inside the Canberra Bubble.

In the program broadcast last month, the journalists Louise Milligan and Lucy Carter investigated complaints about attorney general Christian Porter, including an alleged history of sexist and inappropriate behaviour towards women, and an affair the acting immigration minister, Alan Tudge, had with a female adviser in 2017.

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The neo-Nazi symbol posted by Pete Evans has a strange and dark history | Jason Wilson

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The sonnenrad is associated with a grab bag of esoteric racist nonsense, but that doesn’t make it any less powerful as a symbol of hatred and murder

If you weren’t aware that the symbol posted by Pete Evans is functionally equivalent to a swastika, that’s because part of its attraction to contemporary neo-Nazis is its slight obfuscation of the true nature of their movement.

It’s also because it has been more widely adopted as a symbol for the racist politics of fascism as the focus of that movement has changed its emphasis from ultranationalism to a transnational focus on supposed dangers to the white race, wherever they may be.

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Ex-PMs unite in Australia in bid to curb power of Murdoch empire

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Former rivals to star in Leveson-style inquiry into mogul’s near-monopoly of the country’s media

In high public office, both men lived and died at the word of the world’s most influential media mogul, Rupert Murdoch. But now two former Australian prime ministers are at the vanguard of a campaign to redress the balance of power. It is a movement that Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, the respective former Labor and Liberal leaders of Australia, hope will go on to undermine all of Murdoch’s international enterprises.

The two former PMs were once rivals but are to appear as joint star witnesses at an upcoming Australian parliamentary inquiry into Murdoch’s dominance of the Australian political debate. Both are to argue that News Corp Australia has become the propaganda arm of the rightwing Liberal government.

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Q+A: Malcolm Turnbull clashes with News Corp’s Paul Kelly over climate coverage

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Former PM says Murdoch media has become ‘pure propaganda’ and is doing enormous damage to the world’s ability to respond to climate change

Malcolm Turnbull says News Corp has become an organisation for “pure propaganda” that has done enormous damage through its promotion of climate change denial.

In a heated exchange on Monday night’s Q&A, the former prime minister and the Australian’s editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, clashed over the media organisation’s treatment of climate science.

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Kevin Rudd petition calls for royal commission into News Corp domination of Australian media

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Petition set up by the former PM caused problems for the Parliament House website after more than 38,000 people signed in 24 hours

The former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd has launched a petition calling for a royal commission into NewsCorp’s dominance of Australia media, arguing Rupert Murdoch’s media company employs tactics that “chill free speech and undermine public debate”.

The petition, launched on the Australian Parliament website on Saturday, had gained more than 38,000 signatures by Sunday morning, with Rudd tweeting that the popularity of the petition had caused the website to suspect users signing it were robots.

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Two Australian journalists from ABC and AFR pulled out of China after embassy warnings

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Bill Birtles from the national broadcaster and Michael Smith forced to shelter with Australian diplomats during negotiations for their safe exit

Two Australian foreign correspondents in China have been urgently flown home after a tense diplomatic standoff.

The ABC’s Bill Birtles and the Australian Financial Review’s Michael Smith both left China on Monday night after reportedly being questioned by China’s ministry of state security.

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Journalists charged with breaching George Pell suppression order to face trial in November

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Twenty-one separate publications, six corporate groups and 19 individual journalists charged

Twenty-one separate publications, six corporate groups and 19 individual journalists charged with breaching a suppression order during the George Pell trial in 2018 will face a single, but complex, trial in November.

Pell was acquitted of all charges by the high court on appeal in April.

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Facebook threatens to block Australians from sharing news in battle over landmark media law

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Digital giant says it will stop users of Facebook and Instagram sharing local and international news if new law proposed by competition watchdog is approved

Facebook will block Australians from sharing news if a landmark plan to make digital platforms pay for news content becomes law, the digital giant has warned.

The sharing of personal content between family and friends will not be affected and neither will the sharing of news by Facebook users outside of Australia, the social network said.

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News Corp posts US$1.5bn loss driven by sharp declines in newspaper revenue

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Revenue collapses by 16% in Australia and 13% in the UK, while Foxtel loses 12% of its subscribers in Australia

News Corp has posted a US$1.5bn loss, with its Australian and United Kingdom newspaper businesses suffering sharp declines in revenue and its Foxtel pay-TV business in Australia bleeding subscribers, new financial results for 2019-20 show.

The global media giant released its financial results for 2019/20 on Thursday in the US. The reports paint a grim picture across the last quarter and year, with the exception of its Dow Jones business.

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Police interrogate five Australian Al Jazeera journalists accused of sedition in Malaysia

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Journalists ordered to be questioned after broadcast of documentary about migrant workers in Kuala Lumpur during Covid-19 pandemic

Five Australian journalists are being interrogated by Malaysian authorities who have accused them of sedition and defamation after the broadcast of a documentary about migrant workers in Kuala Lumpur during Covid-19.

A week after the broadcast of the Al Jazeera English documentary in Malaysia, the journalists were ordered to attend the police station for questioning on Friday morning.

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Australian Federal Police ask prosecutors to consider charges against ABC journalist

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Prosecutors receive brief of evidence relating to the ABC’s reporting on alleged war crimes by Australian forces in Afghanistan

The Australian Federal Police has referred a brief of evidence to prosecutors relating to the ABC’s investigation of alleged war crimes by Australian troops in Afghanistan.

In a statement on Thursday, the AFP said it had forwarded documents to the commonwealth director of public prosecutions in relation to the case, which began in July 2017 and culminated in a raid on the ABC’s headquarters in June 2019.

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