Australian news lovers who have been hoping for tax incentives to save the non-profit news industry are still waiting to hear any good news about tax deductions and offsets.
The creation of a deductible gift recipient category for journalism in Australia has been proposed as a way of incentivising funding of non-profit news by making donations more lucrative for philanthropists.
The idea to resurrect public interest journalism by charitable hands is neither new nor unfounded.
Under the current framework it is difficult, though not impossible, for non-profit news organisations to achieve tax-deductible gift status (DGR) in Australia.
The Public Interest Journalism Initiative (PIJI) research and projects manager, Gary Dickson, wrote in a new review of philanthropic proposals to fund journalism, that three significant inquiries into Australian media had examined the issue: the 2012 Finkelstein Inquiry, the 2017 Future of Public Interest Journalism Inquiry, and the most recent 2019 Digital Platforms Inquiry.
The 2019 Australian Competition and Consumer Commission digital platforms inquiry found there was a major decrease in the number and types of public interest journalism conducted by the three largest Australian news publisher groups, and a significant fall in the number of articles published which covered local government, local court, health and science issues during the past 15 years.
The ACCC’s report said the decline coincided with reductions in Australian metropolitan journalists and reductions in print/online media revenue over the survey period.
The ACCC’s report also said philanthropically-funded and not-for-profit journalism could perform a more significant role in increasing public interest journalism in Australia, noting that this kind of work was more common overseas.
But in response to the 2017 Public Interest Journalism Inquiry recommendations, the federal government has not made it easier to support news with tax incentives, saying news organisations already had the ability to seek DGR status through the existing framework.
However the federal government introduced a world-first News Media Bargaining Code to ‘level the digital playing field’ by forcing the big platforms to pay for news.
But in a 2021 article by The Conversation, economist Joshua Gans wrote the News Media Bargaining Code strategy actually meant that it was the “large digital platforms doing deals with the largest news outlets”.
Considering local reporting and public interest journalism have fallen by the wayside, there’s still a need for a philanthropic push to support non-profits.
PIJI’s Gary Dickson, wrote in his PIJI review, that there was yet to be research conducted on the views of Australian philanthropists and foundations.
“The lack of information about the amount of charitable money that might be available for the news sector is a significant barrier to understanding the potential of philanthropy for public interest journalism in Australia,” Dickson wrote.
The Public Interest Journalism Initiative has now called on philanthropic parties to take part in research to uncover how much potential there is in the Australian context.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is a non-profit based in the US that relies on philanthropic funding, including ‘general support funding’ and a global network to achieve “unprecedented reporting collaborations”.
ICIJ director Gerard Ryle told the Future of Public Interest Journalism Inquiry select committee in 2017 he thought Australia was one of the most difficult environments in which to do journalism.
“You are asking for my opinion. I feel that you could help at the front end of journalism rather than looking at little side issues like a grant here or a grant there. I think you could introduce tax deductibility for non-profit journalism, which would help a lot,” Ryle said.
“The business models that have sustained journalism are broken. In many ways the reason I see ICIJ has flourished is because of that: people in the media organisations are now willing to listen to new methods of doing things,” he said.
In a 2017 article by The Conversation, Dr Bill Birnbauer wrote of the profound cultural transformation in how mainstream media organisations regard non-profit centre stories in the United States and how this could occur in Australia.
“Collaborations between legacy and non-profit media are commonplace in the United States because non-profit journalists have the same ethics, news values and editorial practises as journalists in the commercial and public media,” Dr Birnbauer wrote.
But instead, in Australia, news organisations keen on growing public interest journalism find alternate pathways to receive philanthropic funding, including partnering up with institutions such as universities to channel grants.
Australian journalism deserves clearer access to philanthropic funding, granted it’s there to be given.
Feature photo: Mathieu Stern on Upsplash
I agree that there is a huge potential for philanthropic funding for journalism projects in Australia and we’ve seen that already with initiatives like Judith Neilson’s new institute. However, I am wary of big donors as journalists might be trading one corporate owner for another. We did discuss the possible impacts of that in class with the example of Amazon’s ownership of Washington Post resulting in Amazon being a no-go zone for their reporters. But I’m not sure how much longer current projects can survive on piecemeal grants or reader subscriptions…
As long as no single business had an overwhelming steak in the philanthropy, potentially causing the reporting on their business to go unexplored, this could be a great solution.
The associated press is a newswire service funded by other journalistic outlets and used by most everyone of them to fill out their news outlets was seemingly untouchable until early last year, 2020, when the seemingly unthinkable announcement that the AP was closing down was announced.
It has since been saved but it was very worrying that such an important news source almost disappeared without the support of its fellow news outlets.
Finding the right mix of philanthropy and other funding is a difficult tightrope walk.
We could take some money out of spending $89 billion on submarines we could be funding journalism.
I think that there is huge potential for philanthropic funding to become a way forward for many news organisations struggling to maintain financial viability. There are many news publications that could benefit from this, especially with regional newspapers struggling to stay afloat. If the government made it easier for these publications to achieve DGR status, I believe that there would be individuals and/or companies who would be happy to donate to the cause of keeping quality journalism alive. I think this would work particularly well in smaller, regional communities where the public has more of a vested interest in the local news. But overall, if there is a framework established that ensures the integrity of the publications aren’t affected by philanthropic financial support in any way, then I feel that this can only be a great benefit to Austalian news. It does seem that more research would be very helpful though, so hopefully that eventuates soon.
Great article, Mariah.
I completely agree that the government should come up with a framework for awarding DGR status to non-profit media orgs. I was looking at the requirements for DGR status in the Tax Assessment Act, and it’s hard to see which existing channels the government refers to – it doesn’t seem like they’d be eligible under the ‘education’ category like in the US.
I think that the non-profit model is an excellent one. There is a risk of undue influence from big donors, but it’s certainly no less than the risk (certainty?) of undue influence from shareholders in traditional media.
While I believe philanthropic funding could be a huge financial benefit to public interest journalism, I’m not the most confident that it’d be advantageous for press freedom. After all, what’s stopping them from instructing a publication they donate to regularly to avoid a certain topic for their personal gain? In this regard, it’s undeniable that the potential for censorship is very much present. I suppose both sides have their pros and cons.
It’s very clear that the traditional methods of funding for journalism, and the newer methods like the News Media Bargaining Code, are not sufficient to sustain public interest reporting in Australia. I think it should be easier for philanthropy to fund journalism, but what kind of oversight would there need to be to make sure large donations don’t come with strings attached? I liked Emma’s comment about trading one owner for another. We definitely need a funding solution, though, maybe this could be it! Great, insightful article, Mariah!