Where have all the subeditors gone?

Once media outlets controlled the material they published, but now big social media interests monopolise international fact checkers and the results are not always good.

If one was to answer the question about where all the fact checkers have gone, it is good to see that many have gone to AAP. For many, many decades, AAP has provided fantastic press and radio news wires. Indeed, AAP should be a celebrated as the very fine organisation, which it is. It is true, however, that Google helps to fund AAP.

My issue is really about universities such as RMIT, when they run fact-check agencies, such as RMIT ABC fact check and RMIT Fact Lab. They are not tried and tested news services such as AAP, they are universities. Academics will control the fact checks, rather than news people who work in the news industry. That is not a good thing to me.

Sydney's Daily Telegraph previously reported that Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is a partner with all three of the fact check companies I have mentioned so far in this piece.

Daily Telegraph commentators are concerned about what comes out of the news silo after outside providers fact check all these articles. They believe is too far pro-vaccine and too far pro-climate change. Anyone could have predicted this, because the government line mainly promotes favourable responses to these issues.

My primary concern is what happens with all the other articles, which are not based on such polarising topics? The telegraph article I read stated that 65 per cent of the fact checks sided with "left leaning politicians."

The article referred to the Albanese Federal Government's Misinformation Bill. It said the federal government's proposed laws would give fact checking bodies "enormous weight" to determine what social media companies censor and what is 'misinformation.'

Other government bills have attempted similar censorship. The former Gillard Labor government tried to put the Public Interest Media Advocate bill (PIMA) through the parliament in 2013. It was unsuccessful. PIMA would have made newspapers sign up with content regulators.

The Australian Labor Party had given $10 million to the ABC to fund a fact-checking unit, prior to the 2013 federal election.

Another attempt at censorship came from the former chairman of the Australian Press Council Julian Disney. He wanted a federal judge to fine rouge media proprietors $30,000 each time they did something he didn't like. This suggestion went through the Finkelstein Inquiry Into Media Regulation, in 2012.

The major news companies have reduced and closed vast numbers of newsrooms, in the interest of corporate profits. The cutting of small regional and local country news services tells a story of profit over people.

When the big corporate interests cut these small local news services, they will never reemerge, because the big corporate interests did not sell the small operations to independent news providers, they axed the newsrooms completely.

It's very hard to forgive people for cutting these services, but that is a symptom of what happens when you regulate corporate news services to such an extent that they can only exist when government approved fact checking agencies check their articles.

The media people are supposed inform the powerless about what the powerful are doing, but the powerful don't always want you to know anything.

My argument is that if things that are neither here nor there and not a threat to anyone, but are simply other sides to important stories, then what right does the government have to censor such information? ― Joseph Walz

Information used in this piece can be found in:

The Daily Telegraph: Checkers need to stick to the facts: James Morrow and Sophie Elsworth Monday April 1, 2024.

The Daily Telegraph: Study shows info 'umpires have left-wing bias: Sophie Elsworth, Monday April 1, 2024.

See also: Fact check units ‘favour left-wing views’ on issues, The Australian