Safeguarding Quality and Integrity in News
News is an important source of information for Australians and plays a crucial role in democracy and civil society, but ongoing disruption in the media environment has impacted news itself, and the way news is consumed. The Australian Communications and Media Authority commissioned Heartward to investigate these changes, to ensure the issues were well understood and supported in Australia’s communications regulatory framework.
“The outcome sought was a rich understanding of Australians’ attitudes, behaviours and preferences towards impartiality, commercial influence, diversity and localism in news.”
This changing media landscape has led to shifts in consumer attitudes to news and news consumption patterns and has raised concerns over the quality and integrity of news. With Australians now accessing a variety of sources of news online and offline, supporting local news and diversity in news are also key challenges.
Heartward designed and implemented a national program of innovative qualitative research to paint a vivid picture of the views and habits of Australians across the country when it comes to news, in particular illuminating the specific perceived value and meaning that impartial, high quality and sufficiently locally-focused news holds for people. This work reached broadly through face to face and digital methods, including focus groups, interviews, news consumption diaries and case studies, to capture input from more than 130 people from all walks of life.
The significance of Heartward’s findings were in ensuring the voice and preferences of consumers of news were clearly represented in the national discussion on these important issues, and could form foundational input into any proposed changes to the regulatory environment.
To seed further consideration and debate of these issues, ACMA has made our research, alongside other research undertaken as part of the broader program of work, publicly available in two separate reports, on impartiality and commercial influence, and on diversity and localism.