1 INTRODUCTION

When the Melbourne-based tabloid Herald Sun termed the then newly emerged novel coronavirus as “Chinese Virus” which caused “Pandamonium” in the illustration for its headline story on 29 Jan. 2020, it instantly sparked protest in the Chinese Australian community. Within ten days, 74,000 people signed a petition, demanding the newspaper to apologise for this “downright offensive and unacceptable race discrimination”1. This would serve as another example of “[Australia’s] skewed position from its media” as having been argued by some papers and commentaries by now. A commentary on The Diplomat in Dec. 2019, for example, observed that “In 2019, China’s image in Australian media outlets took a noticeable turn for the worse”.

This paper intends to explore behind the evidently growing negativity in China-related reportage in Australia, in particular from an analysis of Australia’s media sector: the disruptive changes and fierce competition in the industry, the ensuing media reform and corporate acquisition enabled by it, and palpable impact on editors and journalists from these sectoral shifts. The authors argue that negativity about China in Australia’s media reports is nothing new, rather a constant occurrence in the near history as a result of rising tension or anxiety in Australia towards the rising global power. For the most recent wave (which arguably started long before 2019), such strategic uneasiness got tangled up with unprecedented competition and disruption in Australia’s media sector, which together resulted in a heightened negativity like no other in its China reports, or indeed coverage of all topics.

2 GROWING NEGATIVITY: NOT A RECENT TREND

Negativity is commonly adopted to describe media’s practice or tendency of selecting a more negative aspect, approach or choice of words in their report. It has been repeatedly shown by studies that negative information is more likely to attract more intense and emotional responses than positive or neutral ones (and thus more sales), through the traditional means of media like print, TV and radio to the more modern ones like digital media3. Therefore, it can be even argued that media have an intrinsic desire of representing negativity, particularly when fuelled by the right external factors.

In the same sense, it is first important to note that growing negativity in China-related coverage by Australian media was not something new: it started long before 2019, with several conspicuous worst months when controversy over a China-related matter was getting traction. Take Chinese investment in Australia as an example: it has remained one of the most controversial aspects of economic relations between the two countries, with a consistent majority (over 50%) of Australian poll respondents recording they feel “too much Chinese investment is allowed” since the question was first asked ten years ago.

Negative sentiment was alive in media reports when Chinese investment in Australia started to become substantial and heavily concentrated in its prized mining sector since 2005, whose interest later shifted to sectors of no less importance, such as agricultural land and infrastructure like ports and power grid. Alleged ill intentions of ownership and therefore control of Australia’s economic and security assets frequently made headlines.

When Chinalco worked with Alcoa, a US-based aluminium company, to sweep up 9%of stake in Rio Tinto in early 2008, media headlines all portrayed the deal in highly negative terms, even though Chinalco showed good will by volunteering to apply to Australia’s foreign investment screening authorities Foreign Investment Review Board, which was not required under rules then. Australian Financial Review, for example, used “invader” to describe Chinese investment, and Sydney Morning Herald described it as “China Raids Rio” in its title. A similar move by a western company might very well be depicted with at least a hint of admiration for such a “feat”.

Then, in the failed Kidman proposal 2015-2016 which would involve a significant size of the country’s agricultural land, Australian Financial Review claimed “China’s hunger for Australian agricultural land only the beginning”, and editors in Sydney Morning Herald warned and advocated that “more thought must be given to foreign investment”.

When Chinese investment later came into the more sensitive infrastructure industry, Australia’s media did not even try to tone down its anxiety, caution and fear. In the case of proposed leasing of Port of Darwin, Sky News bluntly called it “a very bad decision”, and there were “sufficient security concerns” to “break” this deal. Australian Financial Review tried hard to link the dots all the way to “China’s troubled shadow banking industry”.

Since then, Chinese companies, state-owned or private, have, to say the best, largely been depicted as a vehicle of the government. Any corporate move would instantly be interpreted against an alleged “grand strategy” to “control Australia’s assets”. For instance, in the Ausgrid proposal, Australia’s most popular news website—News.Com.Au—claimed it was “a big mistake” and Sydney Morning Herald chose headlines such as “Australia Insults China with Ausgrid Rejection”. It culminated in a FIRB confirmation that there was “no such thing as a private company in China”.

It was from around 2014 that such suspicion and anxiety was no longer restricted to business pages and became relevant to everyone. Chinese nationals have been constantly blamed for pushing up the property price to record high by snapping up houses in Australia. ABC News discussed “Chinese buyers [were] driving up Australia’s housing prices”, Business Insider Australia warned that “Chinese buyers [were] getting ready to flock back into Australia’s ‘cheap’ property market”. In fact, this scapegoating (there has been ample study to prove otherwise) fuelled by media was acknowledged as the main driver behind recent mounting concern over Chinese investment in Australia in Lowy Institute’s annual polling. The proportion of respondents agreeing that the Australian government is “allowing too much investment from China” surged from a consistent 56-57% between 2010-2014 to 72% in 2018. The pollster reached conclusion after analysis that the spiking opposition was a result of media coverage on Chinese buying up real property in Australia, which would again show how relevancy matters in polling. Interestingly, the purchasing activities of Chinese buyers of real property in Australia rose significantly during 2013-2016. It wasn’t represented as an issue and then reflected in polling until media reports soared during 2014-2017. The poll result, therefore, is best evidence how media coverage would impact public sentiment.

3 THIS ROUND OF DOWNTURN: FROM LATE 2017 BUT DRASTIC INCREASE IN MID-2019

Foreign capital inflow indeed only constitutes one of the concerns felt in the country down under. With the latest round, for example, geopolitical and strategic tensions might play the most important part. However, this latest round of downturn didn’t start in 2019, as some have argued, but arguably in late 2017 when topics of controversy moved to South China Sea, Belt and Road Initiative, Australia’s strategic choice in the face of two super powers (or not having to choose at all, as some strategists have argued) and alleged Chinese interference into Australian politics.

FIG. 1 A SHARP SPIKE IN REPORTING ABOUT CHINA

2019 would stand out, however, for a drastic increase in the number of reports on China. Media monitoring company Streem published in late September last year, for example, that “there has been a sharp spike in reporting about China” during the examined period between Jan. 2018 and August 201919. In particular, June-to-August 2019 witnessed a record high, with August 2019 saw a year-on-year doubling.

For the twelve months examined, 1 July 2018 to 30 June 2019, the 28 major Australian media outlets from whom data were compiled turned out over 300,000 stories mentioning China, with most discussed themes including trade, Donald Trump, security, Hong Kong and trade war.

Of these top twenty themes, the majority would regularly feature a negative approach, aspect or read, for example, security, Hong Kong, trade war, universities, resources, military, defence, Xi Jinping, Huawei, espionage, education, South China Sea, human rights, hacking, Uyghur, and Belt and Road, with the remaining four topics of trade, Donald Trump, trade partner and tourism may be represented in a mixed or neutral approach, rather than overwhelmingly negative. It would not even take serious media analysis, just a common media reader, to conclude as above.

While “trade war” and “Hong Kong” largely contributed to the surge, a trend which perhaps would be observed in other countries as well, Australian media’s heightened interest in China across a longer time span is certainly evidence for the growing integration of the two economies, much of which now involves people-to-people exchange like wine and dairy trade, overseas study and tourism. The increasing negativity of China-related stories, on the other hand, reflects growing dissent between the two countries in issues of importance and Australia’s growing anxiety and debate over its policy choice in the current world affairs.

FIG. 2 MEDIA MENTIONS OF CHINA TOPIC

4 GROWING NEGATIVITY IN AUSTRALIA’S MEDIA COVERAGE: A GENERAL TREND ON ALL TOPICS

It would run the risk of an over-simplistic analysis, however, if only strategic differences with China are to be counted in factoring of more one-sided China reports, as most notably, for several years now growing negativity has been observed in media coverage of other topics as well, including and perhaps particularly domestic issues.

The turn of 2017 and 2018 witnessed a significant shift towards negativity in Australian media coverage, with academics making this observation starting to emerge later in 2018. The annual tracking survey of Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at University of Oxford Reuters Institute Digital News Report confirms this: negativity was never raised as an issue in any of its reports prior to 2019, but the annual survey conducted in early 2019 raised it for the first time and found that 44% of respondents in Australia believed the news media is “often too negative”, significantly higher than the 38-country average—39% and ranking the second highest among advanced economies, behind the UK (47%).

Negative news coverage in Australia over the recent time has been characterised by a more sensational and thus in many cases negative choice of stories, perspectives, titles and presentations and less meticulous fact-checking. Respondents to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019, for example, said that while the news media were better at keeping them informed about current affairs, “topic selection was often too negative” and “views on the events were too negative”. Interestingly, news consumers were more likely to hold this view among right-wing groups (53%) than left-wing viewpoint holders (41%), news payers (51%) than non-payers (43%), and older news consumers (45% of respondents aged 73+) than younger ones (37% of Generation Z) .

With growing negativity increasingly observed by Australian news consumers, their trust in news has leaned likewise. According to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2020, the proportion of respondents who said they “trust the news media most of the time” further decreased from 44% in 2019 to 38% in 2020, and trust in news generally has fallen across all platforms of news: trust of the print newspapers and magazines audience has dropped the most, by almost 20% from 58% in 2018 to a low of 39% in 2020’s survey.

Media scholars in Australia have come to a similar conclusion. As early as in 2018, University of Technology Sydney pointed to “a trust issue” between Australians and journalists, with a qualitative study to understand Australians’ viewpoints about news media. Complaints about Australia’s news media exceed compliments and a majority of respondents identified flaws in Australia’s media’s as “too much sensationalism and rubbish being touted as news” and “often very biased blatantly misleading, dishonest and prejudice”.

In addition to scholarly observations, news created by these news people themselves constantly remind us this most recent trend of negativity in Australian media. For some of the worst cases, behaviour of journalists and editors even borders on violation of journalism ethics.

BuzzFeed (Australia) was sued for defamation for allegedly “slut shaming” a federal MP after it published in mid-2018 a “salacious” article26 which described the MP as a “slut” and “sexually perverted”, without contacting her for response. The MP said “she was defamed” in the article posted by BuzzFeed, which included “misconduct allegations” against her. The ensuing legal battle came to an end with an “out-of-court settlement” in 2019 “with an apology from BuzzFeed and the journalist to the MP” and compensation money “for the collapse of her political career”, which was considered as a “big whack for the media” .

Following what Paul Kelly, an eminent Australian Journalist and commentator, slammed as “calculated media assaults on Pell”, in early 2019 more than 20 publications and 19 journalists, covering Australia’s major outlets, were summoned to appear before court for their reporting of the conviction of Cardinal George Pell on child sex abuse charges (and thus alleged breaches of suppression order). In order to keep the “proper administration of justice” for Cardinal George Pell’s case, the county court chief judge enforced “the suppression order over the trial”, but many media companies “throughout Australia and overseas” made the verdict known to the public and some of them did not attend the trial.

5 AUSTRALIA’S MEDIA SECTOR: SITUATIONAL CHANGES BY NEW DIGITAL MEDIA, MEDIA REFORM, THE NEW BIG TWO, LAYOFFS AND RESTRUCTURING

Given growing negativity has been a common feature of news coverage in Australia, or even arguably beyond Australia in many parts of the world, factors beyond the rise of China and tensions in China-Australia relations deserve a serious examination. The authors would attempt to attest to this correlation by outlining the disruptive changes and heightened competition in the media sector, ensuing media reform since late 2017 and major mergers and acquisitions in 2018, which further fuelled pressure on editors and journalists who would now, deliberately or not, turn to more negative and sensational take of news to secure their career.

5.1 Situational Changes by New Digital Media

For a long time, Australia's media industry was under a cross-ownership restriction (the “two out of three” rule) and dominated by two major groups: Fairfax and the News Corp. Yet as online news and social media gain ground in Australia’s news consumption, like in many other countries, both found that, in addition to fierce competition in between, they now had to fend off social media moguls like Facebook and Google who have benefited considerably from digital advertising, as well as public-funded outlets like the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Shifting habits of news consumption among the public are best depicted by the annual Reuters Institute Digital News Report. While Australian respondents to the 2018 report would still rate offline news as their main source, by a small margin of 53% v. 47%, it was also recognised by the report that “the overall consumption of news via online platforms in Australia has surpassed the consumption via offline platforms”. In fact, early 2018 already saw a 3% increase in the proportion of respondents recording online sources, from 44% in 2017. The 2019 report witnessed the number shrinking to 43% but recovered to 48% in the most recent 2020 report.

Losing ground in readership amongst shifting landscape of news consumption, traditional media, in particular print media, have also come to realise the competitive advantage digital media, like Facebook and Google, enjoy against them. Therefore, they have pushed for a public inquiry led by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission into “the impact of digital platforms on competition in media and advertising services markets, in particular in relation to the supply of news and journalistic content” , which was launched in December 2017 and issued preliminary report twelve months later, and at the same time advocated for an overdue reform in Australia’s media sector.

5.2 Media Reform

It was against this backdrop that the hard-lobbied Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Act 2017 was finally adopted by the then Turnbull government in late 2017. It repealed two strict rules about media control and ownership: the “two out of three” rule and the “seventy-five per cent audience reach rule”, established new media content requirements for regional media, and abolished high media license charges by levying a new transmitter tax.

The main driver to the 2017 media reform was, as presented above, the ever larger disadvantage of traditional media as opposed to their digital competitors in an era of digital news consumption, resulted from the three-decade long ownership restrictions on cross-media platforms. Traditional media, they argued, “must rely on economies of scale to fend off competition”. In late 2017 the then Turnbull Government finally lifted Australia’s cross-media ownership restriction, which had prohibited any company from owning more than two of the three platforms—television, newspaper and radio—in the same market, which in turn enabled merges and acquisitions in the media sector.

In spite of passage of the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Act 2017, the battle between traditional media and digital media (Facebook and Google in the case of Australia) showed no sign of an end, which again indicates how long-lasting and fundamental this driver is when understanding the sectoral changes. Six months after the preliminary report, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission submitted its final report to government in mid 2019 which found that competition between traditional media and social media, such as Google and Facebook, has further intensified. News Corp stated that Google is using its dominant position in both the search service and advertising technology markets to jeopardize the interests of consumers, advertisers, and news publishers. It is suggested that by the report that Google sell off its search business, or just keep the research business and spin off the rest to a third party.

5.3 The New Big Two, Layoffs and Restructuring

The long-awaited media reform in late 2017 opened way to acquisition and consolidation and subsequently reshuffling, reorganisation and downsizing in Australia’s media sector, similar to what has happened in the US after the FCC eliminated cross-ownership ban.

Australian private media businesses saw a complete restructuring and reshuffling in the following 2018 and 2019. Once multi-platform operation was made possible, Nine Entertainment completed its acquisition of 177-year-old media conglomerate Fairfax in late 2018 and thus replaced it as one of the new big two, alongside with Murdoch’s News Corp. Although Nine Entertainment committed to the editorial independence for the three newly acquired major media outlets, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and Australian Financial Review after its acquisition of Fairfax, the line and major sources of income it would pursue would be drastically different from old-time Fairfax. As had been argued, traditional media can only survive on multi-platform economy of scale. One of the prized assets in the acquisition is in fact Domain, a property business Fairfax owned majority stakes. Nine Entertainment retained the three major newspapers, selling all of Fairfax’s 160 regional titles to Antony Catalano.

Driven by what had already been a difficult time in Australia’s media sector and this emergency need for traditional media businesses to survive, the sector has been particularly hard hit by post-merger restructuring, layoffs and redundancies. Naturally, this real pressure to survive has been forwarded to the editorial and journalistic teams, who would now, even understandably, yield to “eyeballs” and “attention” to secure their job.

As a result, the three major newspapers under Nine had laid off as many as 92 staffs in 2018, News Corp laid off more than 60 staffs in 2018, and foreign media companies such as BuzzFeed has been also cutting staff members in Australia too42. Even public-funded ABC, amid criticism from the Liberal Coalition government, saw its funding slashed, which would continue to leave job losses a real danger. This is highly disruptive for a media market of Australia’s size. As the 2019 Digital News Report acknowledged, “The Australian media landscape has been through 12 months [ending Jan. 2019] of upheaval marked by takeovers, closures, job losses…”.

5.4 Negative and Sensational: Editors’ and Journalists’ Solution?

The tendency towards negativity in news reporting has a long history, with some scholars arguing that media coverage is inherently negative and the nature of news itself leads to a high degree of negativity. By definition, news should be about things that people do not know about or that are surprising or shocking, if possible. For both journalists and news consumers, positive stories are often seen as less urgent and in turn less likely to be published.

But the past three years, since around the adoption of the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Act 2017, has pointed to a growing negativity like no other in the near history. And the trend has been common across all topics. This would drive the authors to dig into the sector itself: what has been wrong sector-wise?

It is widely acknowledged among scholarly debates and discussions that the content of news has indeed deteriorated from 2018 onwards, arguably the worst during 2018 and 2019, which would again coincide with restructuring in the sector after the reform. Such a deterioration not just features ever more negative and sensational choice of stories, perspectives and interpretations, but also shrinking space for more serious, balanced and nuanced coverage. Journalists and editors alike have complained such. Another outstanding feature, especially among China-related stories, is an obsession to fit whatever story that comes to their view into a prescribed sensational framework, with most commonly seen ones like suppression, cover-up, espionage, etc. The obsession goes so far that not rarely one-sided hearsay is relied on, often journalistic rigour is compromised.

Negativity may temporarily draw people’s attention but in the long term it has the unintended effect of pushing readers away from media. Media monitoring company Streem, for example, reported in 2019 that the growing negativity from Australia’s media has been turning off Australian new audiences44. Meanwhile, The Guardien quotes and agrees with the points presented in Digital News Report that the Australians’ avoiding news consumption should be attributed to the negativity presented by the Australia’s media45. The world-renowned editor, Ulrik Haagerup, claimed that the trust from the audience has been cost by the negativity bias shown persistently in Australian media, and he further explained that negativity is a global journalistic phenomenon which makes audience anxious and disinterested in the news. Commentators also criticized Australia’s media for overlooking the positive news and regurgitating negativity of the society.

This dangerous trend has also been acutely felt by the consumers. As Reuters Institute Digital News Report shows, the Australian public has come across a paradoxical situation where, on the one hand, they can’t help being attracted to negative news, and on the other hand, at least half of them have expressed discontent and concerns about the negativity. The number of Australians with high interest in news has fallen, news avoidance has risen and trust in news has declined.

6 Conclusion

This paper by no means tries to deny other factors at play, e.g. an intrinsic desire by media to publish negative news to attract readers, growing tension between China and Australia, which seems to have influenced reporting in both countries, a more conservatism-led domestic debate in Australia and rising anxiety among a population that has constantly been struggling against the dilemma of economic dependence and strategic-and-ideological differences, among others. However, it would argue that the fundamental shifts and their implications in the media sector itself has largely been overlooked or, intentionally or unintentionally, seen as separate from the sector’s output. An intrinsic difficulty with research on this topic is it would ideally take interviews and survey to quantify and represent such impact, which in turn may be readily denied by media workers when approached with the question. A proper methodology towards this would need to be explored.

While debate over Australia’s media reform always tends to focus on diversity of voices, little attention has been given to the pressure felt by journalists, columnists, editors and producers amid this huge uncertainty of career prospect. It is this urgent need to survive in a bad time which has pressurised the journalists and editors to opt for more sensational stories and titles to attract eyeballs. In fact, this negativity seen in Australian media’s coverage on China may have already become a loud and defining feature across the world. That is why Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, which has been conducting annual survey across the world since 2012, first posed the negativity question in its recent survey in early 2019, feeling the need to capture what may have been a universal shift.

To end on a positive note, such pressure seems to ease off gradually since later 2019, when media workers would confirm to researchers that it will improve. For traditional media companies too, after two years and half of hard battle, ACCC released a draft mandatory code in July 2020 to “enable Australian media to bargain with Google and Facebook to quickly secure fair payment for news content"50. This legislative move was intended to address the “acute bargaining power imbalances between Australian news businesses and Google and Facebook”. Given what Google and Facebook has been made to face by the Australian regulators, it can be reasonably anticipated that government intervention would improve the environment for traditional media businesses in the future. To what extent that will alleviate the pressure on media workers are yet to be seen.

REFERENCES

• [1] Australian Competition & Consumer Commission. (2020, July 31). Australian News Media to Negotiate Payment with Major Digital Platforms. https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/australian-news-media-to-negotiate-payment-with-major-digital-platforms.

• [2] Foreign Investment Review Board of Australian Government. (2017). 2016-17 Annual Report. https://firb.gov.au/about-firb/publications/2016-17-annual-report.

• [3] Kassam, N. (2019, June 26). Lowy Institute Poll 2019. Lowy Institute. https://www.lowyinsti tute.org/publications/lowy-institute-poll-2019.

• [4] Kelly, P. (2019, March 1). Pell’s Conviction and Fall from High Public Esteem Is a Question of Judgement. The Australian. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/pells-conviction-and-fall-from-high-public-esteem-is-a-question-of-judgment/news-story/c39523ba4447c7659d6b38235 81f03b7.

• [5] McDuling, J. (2018, December 7). What does the Nine-Fairfax merger mean? The Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/what-does-the-nine-fairfax-merger-me an-20181204-p50k1o.html

• [6] McGowan, M. (2019, July 30). BuzzFeed Apologises to Emma Husar for Distress Caused by ‘Slut-shaming’ Article. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jul/30/buzzfeed-apologises-to-emma-husar-for-distress-caused-by-slut-shaming-article.

• [7] Meade, A. (2018, December 11). Nine Guts Fairfax Websites after Merger, with Dozens laid off. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/dec/11/nine-guts-fairfax-websites-after-m erger-with-dozens-laid-off

• [8] Molitorisz, S. (2018, September 21). Trust and News Media in Australia: A Qualitative Study. University of Technology Sydney.https://www.uts.edu.au/node/247996/projects-and-research/trust-journalism-falling-love-again/trust-and-news-media-australia-qualitative-study.

• [9] Newman, N., Fletcher, R., Kalogeropoulos, A., & Nielsen, R. K. (2019, June 12). Digital News Report 2019. Reuters Institute. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/inline-files/DNR_2019 FINAL.pdf.

• [10] Pascoe, M. (2016, August 30). Australia Insults China with Ausgrid Rejection. The Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/australia-insults-china-with-ausgrid-rejection-20160815-gqsegx.html.

• [11] Ryder, T. (2020, April 6). Media Is Overlooking the Positive and Regurgitating Negativity: Hotspotting’s Terry Ryder. Property Observer. https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/terry-ryder/112360-media-is-overlooking-the-positive-and-regurgitating-negativity-terry-ryder.html.

• [12] Streem. (2020, March 12). Relentless Negativity Is Undermining the Media’s Credibility, Editors Told. https://www.streem.com.au/2020/03/12/relentless-negativity-is-undermining-the-medias-credibility.html.