The Albanese government has been urged to remove the “professional news content” exemption from its crackdown on misinformation on social media, amid concerns that news coverage of the voice and Covid has spread false information and lies.
The Greens, independent MPs Zali Steggall and Zoe Daniel and the media law academic Michael Douglas have all questioned the blanket exemption in Labor’s disinformation crackdown.
Douglas and the Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young cited coverage from News Corp as a cause for concern.
Hanson-Young said misinformation was a “growing threat to our democracy, whether it’s spread via large social media platforms or by large multinational media corporations, like the Murdoch media”.
“It’s concerning to see some of these large companies exempt from these reforms,” she told Guardian Australia.
The intervention by the Greens is significant because the Albanese government will need the minor party’s 11 Senate votes to pass the bill, after the Coalition turned against the proposal, which it had supported in government.
The draft bill would allow the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) to require social media companies to toughen their policies on content that is “false, misleading or deceptive, and where the provision of that content on the service is reasonably likely to cause or contribute to serious harm”.
In a submission during consultation on the bill, Douglas said the exemption of professional news content “lacks a coherent basis”.
“Some of the most pervasive examples of misinformation and disinformation in recent years have emerged from news organisations,” he argued.
He said news organisations were “regularly responsible for not only misinformation (eg sloppy journalism), but also disinformation (the deliberate dissemination of known lies)”.
Douglas cited Fox News coverage of the US presidential election and its criticism of Dominion voting systems, which resulted in a US$787.5m settlement in a defamation lawsuit.
“During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Sky News Australia published a swathe of misinformation concerning the public health response by Australian governments,” he said, such as videos criticising lockdowns and promoting unproven treatments.
“More recently, Australian News Corp publications are driving the no case for the referendum on a voice in the Australian constitution.
“They are prioritising legal commentary that might (and should) be characterised as misinformation.”
Hanson-Young said that tech giants and the Murdoch media empire both “profit from generating outrage”.
“This is dangerous for our democracy as we have seen in other places like the US,” she said.
“The Greens will look at the detail of the final bill and are prepared to consider reforms to prevent misinformation and disinformation.”
In her submission, Steggall said she was “particularly concerned” that the powers did not extend to enable the monitoring of professional news content.
“A particularly important effect of this exclusion would be that a broadcaster who would be subject [to] Acma’s monitoring and control under its current powers could simply transfer its content to a digital platform and thus escape scrutiny,” she said.
Steggall told Guardian Australia that freedom of the press should “come with a responsibility for fact-based journalism”.
“We have had some news platforms willing to platform disinformation,” she said, citing “scientific misinformation about climate change”.
“We certainly saw that pushed to a whole other level during Covid – platforming and amplifying disinformation when it came to vaccines.”
She said that under the current bill some disinformation would be allowed to remain on a digital platform because it would be exempt, “but something similar from a member of the public would be subject to the code”.
“Mis[information] and disinformation shouldn’t be permitted in any format. Consistency is important.”
Government information is also excluded from the crackdown.
Kevin Lynch, a media lawyer and partner at Johnson Winter Slattery, said it would be difficult to police the distinction between “factual assertions” and other material that was typically online “including commentary, claims, beliefs or even delusions”.
He said this could force a “cautious digital service provider” to take down material that fell outside the definition of misinformation.
“This regulation, which has government information as one class of excluded content, is likely to exacerbate distrust, isolation and the anti-establishment preoccupations of the very online combatants who are its targets.”
Daniel, a former ABC journalist, told parliament earlier in September that “excluding government information and online news media content” from the bill’s remit was “questionable”.
“I say: don’t bin the bill; fix the bill.”
The Labor MP Mike Freelander said that “clearly a lot of the medical evidence that was spouted not just on Sky News but other media” during the pandemic was “wrong, inappropriate and did lead to some bad outcomes”.
But Freelander said he understood the need for exemptions because he was “a strong believer in free speech”.
Guardian Australia contacted News Corp for comment.
A spokesperson for the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, said the government sought feedback during consultation on whether the bill struck the right balance between “protecting Australians from serious harms online and protecting freedom of expression that is fundamental to democracy”.
“The government … is giving careful consideration to feedback received before the bill is finalised and introduced to parliament later this year.”
