Activist group takes aim at media with fresh campaign
Progressive campaigners GetUp, who are trying to turn a key constituency away from One Nation, will turn their attention to another target: media reform.
The million-strong network, which rose to prominence in the 2010s, is coming to the fore with a big-money campaign to prevent Pauline Hanson’s anti-immigration party from winning a by-election in the federal seat of Farrer on Saturday.
He is also mounting a new challenge by petitioning Anthony Albanese’s government to tighten regulations on Australian media.
It begins with an open letter, whose signatories include Rosie Batty, Bob Brown, Saxon Mullins and Brittany Higgins.
Campaigners want a “truly independent” journalism standards authority to be established by abolishing the Australian Press Council and the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
This body will have the power to challenge digital publishers, demand significant corrections, and grant right of reply to wronged parties.
“Over the years, there have been countless stories of victims of press harassment having their lives and livelihoods presented as entertainment, without the right of reply or any remedy,” the open letter said. The statement is included.
This pressure is driven by concerns about media concentration in Australia, where there are fewer media owners and broadcasters than comparable democracies.
The campaign is similar to Hacked Off, which emerged in the UK following the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World, the London newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Mr Murdoch’s media empire is the target of this campaign, with signatories claiming the 95-year-old is being harassed by Australian publications.
David Sharaz, GetUp’s head of media and campaigns and Ms Higgins’s partner, is a spokesman for the initiative.
“I’ve watched what some news organizations have done to people who speak out. I’ve experienced it,” Mr. Sharaz said.
“We call for an independent authority that investigates media complaints quickly, requires significant corrections, and is not beholden to the people it oversees. So no one has to go through what Brittany did.”
GetUp is not the first group to criticize the press council.
National journalists union MEAA withdrew from the organization in 2021, hoping to “start a serious debate about media regulation”, citing slow and inconsistent decisions.
GetUp also believes that the structure of voluntary membership and funding of media organizations is flawed.
Monica Attard, co-director of the UTS Center for Media Transition and a former presenter of Media Watch, supports reform but believes a new body would lack legitimacy if it were independent of media organisations.
“It has to be a completely new, industry-based structure,” he told AAP.
“Current fragmented media standards schemes should be consolidated into a single cross-platform scheme managed by an industry body with an independent complaints management role.”
GetUp reached the height of its influence in the previous decade, when it played a key role in impeaching Tony Abbott while championing marriage equality and other left-wing causes and candidates.
It grossed $13.2 million in 2019, with the Scott Morrison government acting as a lightning rod for member dissatisfaction.
While its fundraising has since tapered off, falling to a reported $6.4 million in donations in 2024, GetUp has found a new rallying cry for anxious progressives in the rise of One Nation.
