ANTHONY DE CEGLIE: Quality news more important than ever in an age of social media. But we are being taxed to death

Every night across Australia, the No. 1 and No. 2 programs on TV are the 6pm news bulletin.

Combined, 7NEWS and 9NEWS reach an astonishing 3.6 million people on average every night.

In fact, there are only two events of the year where the massive audience reach of the two 6pm news bulletins is combined: the AFL and NRL grand finals.

Channel 7 and Channel 9 are primarily news companies.

It seeps out of our pores and ends up in the living rooms of Australians.

We are the shining light on the hill in an increasingly dystopian world of conspiracy theorists and deep-fakes and anti-vaxxer firecrackers.

Elon Musk doesn’t care about the truth.

He enjoys spreading lies and brags about using his ‘bin fire’ of a site to influence the US elections.

Mark Zuckerberg is apparently happy that Meta can profit from the page impressions that child molesters create when they routinely use his site to hunt for their next victim.

Even the parents of dead children aren’t enough for Facebook to take seriously the damage it does to society.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has labeled Meta as arrogant bullies who must admit the damage they cause.

NSW Premier Chris Minns has often spoken about how social media platforms cynically use algorithms to push dangerous conspiracy theories onto impressionable people – creating a vicious spiral down a rabbit hole he calls the ‘dark corners of the internet’.

Against these evil forces – and it is no exaggeration to call them that – there is only one real antidote.

In a world where the spread of disinformation has never been greater, our role as journalists has never been more important.

We are the only antidote.

But we can’t do it alone.

And the government – ​​which so often tells voters about their fears about social media – needs to realize this and help us.

If the Prime Minister is genuinely concerned about the toxicity of Facebook and Meta and X and TikTok, then lend a hand to the journalism that fights for facts.

The government must stop treating Australia’s news channels with disdain.

Every day, Channel 7 proudly produces around 26 hours of journalism across our country.

But we can’t promise that we can keep doing that forever.

The government acts as if newsrooms are still bathed in rivers of profits.

This is happening at high cost and high risk to journalism and Australian democracy.

Free-to-air networks such as Channel 7 still pay an archaic ‘broadcasting tax’ designed sixty years ago in an era of super-profits that simply no longer exist.

At a time when a viewer can access 10 hours of news on Seven’s free-to-air channel on any given day, the so-called Commercial Broadcast Tax is effectively just a tax on journalism.

In fact, it is a tax on truth and a tax on facts.

And it is a tax on the only antidote to the rise and rise of harmful online platforms.

The cost of Commercial Broadcasting Tax this financial year for stations including Seven, Nine and 10 will be a combined $45 million.

I ask the Albanian government how many journalistic jobs they think that is.

How many TV newsrooms will disappear so we can pay for them?

How many regional reporters will be fired?

How many more layoffs will follow because of a senseless tax from a bygone era that is nothing more than a rounding error for the budget?

No other comparable jurisdiction in the world places this kind of tax burden on broadcasters.

The license fees paid by Australian broadcasters are now the highest in the world, 52 times higher than the per capita equivalent of our US counterparts.

I call on the Albanian government and the opposition to pledge to immediately abolish the commercial broadcasting tax, in the name of journalism.

The future of news and the future of truth in our democracy depends on it.

The government should also immediately explore a reduction in the cost of producing news and current affairs.

They already receive discounts for the production of Australian dramas such as Home and Away and for Australian documentaries.

The government has already decided that it is so important to have this local content for our national psyche that it should be subsidized.

I would say it is even more important for our residents to secure the future of Australian news.

In other industries, all kinds of discounts exist.

And we journalists do a really good job of helping other sectors, like small businesses, lobby for change.

It’s high time we did it ourselves.

Our democracy literally depends on the strength of our journalism.

Journalism is the greatest job and the greatest privilege in the world.

And we need it now.

Anthony De Ceglie is director of news and current affairs at Seven. This is an edited excerpt of a speech he gave at the Melbourne Press Club