Success of News Bargaining Incentive depends on delicate balancing act

The federal government’s release of the News Bargaining Incentive discussion paper and exposure legislation is a welcome, if overdue, step in addressing the entrenched imbalance between global digital platforms and Australian news media businesses.

But the real challenge is no longer conceptual. It is practical. And it is unfolding in a far less forgiving global environment than when these reforms were first conceived.

Australia is now attempting to advance this policy at a time when the United States – home to the world’s dominant technology firms – has spent the past 18 months under the renewed leadership of Donald Trump. That shift matters.

Read more from PIJI chair Allan Fels AO through the link below.

PIJI is an independent advocacy organisation. We appreciate your support. Please consider forwarding this newsletter to someone interested in the sustainability of public interest journalism and its importance to the survival of democracy.

News Bargaining Incentive a necessary reform in a far less forgiving world

The release of the News Bargaining Incentive is welcome, if overdue. But it is unfolding in a far less forgiving global environment than when these reforms were conceived.

‘If I can do it, others can too’: How Bellingcat champions open-source investigations

Eliot Higgins started blogging partly to “win arguments on the internet”. Now he helps run an international team of journalists investigating everything from war crimes to wildlife trafficking.

LINA Summit 2026: Small and independent news publishers come together for progress

Murray Bridge rarely grabs national attention, but in March, the rural city was bustling with news publishers and stakeholders from around the country for LINA’s fourth annual summit.

You’re invited!

When journalists can investigate, scrutinise and hold power to account, governments and institutions are more likely to act in the public interest.

This makes safeguarding public interest journalism critical to protecting and renewing Australia’s democracy.

Join Democracy Counts and the Public Interest Journalism Initiative for a townhall on Thursday 7 May, hosted by journalist and press freedom advocate Peter Greste, to explore the state of public interest journalism in Australia and what we need to do to keep it strong and robust.

RSVP today at: https://events.humanitix.com/in-the-public-interest

ICYMI: Industry updates

Australia

• The Select Committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change recommended the Australian government should continue providing funding support for regional and independent media outlets.
  Evidence presented to the committee showed “a robust and healthy local news and independent media sector is critical to combatting information integrity deficits such as dis and misinformation”.
• Meta, Google and the US Trump administration hit back after the Australian government released draft legislation for the News Bargaining Incentive (NBI).
  While Google criticised the exclusion of platforms like Microsoft, Snapchat and OpenAI from the legislation’s scope, a spokesperson for the Trump administration – which has repeatedly wielded the threat of tariffs to exert pressure internationally – likened the NBI to “foreign extortion“.
• Nine is set to cut up to 20 jobs across its TV news and current affairs division. This is part of a wider restructure which will reportedly see more than 100 existing job titles across news and current affairs reduced to less than 10.
  As part of its ‘Future News’ project, Nine said it is investing in new technology, training and equipment. Nine editorial staff were reported to have previously been told to use more AI to improve efficiency, with management set to monitor usage.
• The High Court dismissed Bruce Lehrmann’s bid to challenge the outcome of his failed defamation case against Network 10 and Lisa Wilkinson.
  The case sprang from a 2021 The Project interview with Brittany Higgins, in which she said she was raped in Parliament House in 2019. Higgins did not name the man she was accusing, but Lehrmann claimed he was identifiable.
  The High Court was Lehrmann’s last legal avenue to challenge a previous Federal Court ruling which found on the balance of probabilities, Lehrmann had raped Higgins.
• Legal action was filed in Federal Court against News Corp Australia and its subsidiaries responsible for Sky News, The Australian and The Herald Sun over alleged racial discrimination and hatred against Muslim, Arab and Palestinian Australians.
  
• 2SER, a Sydney community radio station operating since 1979, faces closure in July after one of its two university owners decided to pull funding last year.
  Criticism was levied at the station’s leadership for waiting until six months after Macquarie University decided to withdraw its funding to approach potential replacements.
  Several big names in Australian journalism have passed through the station’s doors, and as of 2024, it had an operating surplus of more than $80,000.
• Medianet released its 2026 Australian Media Landscape Report, which found more than half of journalists surveyed use generative AI or large language models (LLMs) in their work.
  However, 93 per cent of journalists reported concern about the impact of AI or LLMs on journalistic integrity and quality.

Around the World

• BBC News is reportedly set to bear the brunt of 2,000 job cuts planned across the corporation, which is pursuing savings of up to £600 million. The BBC spent £324 million on news and current affairs in the year to March 2025.
  “Most of our savings are people, frankly,” BBC director of news content Richard Burgess told staff.
• The Associated Press began offering buyouts to an unspecified number of its US-based journalists as part of a move away from the organisation’s newspapers and print journalism. At least 40 employees have accepted buyouts.
  “We’re not a newspaper company and we haven’t been for quite some time,” AP executive editor and senior vice president Julie Pace said.
• US journalist Shelly Kittleson was released a week after being kidnapped in Baghdad by Iranian-backed Iraqi militant group Kataib Hezbollah. The Iraqi government reportedly agreed to free several imprisoned members of the group in exchange.
  In a piece for The Atlantic, Kittleson described how, with untreated broken ribs and under threat of death, she was forced to falsely confess to spying before her release.
  Despite her experience, she declared her intention to eventually return to Iraq to take up an offer of an interview from the president of the Supreme Judicial Council, writing: “Many important stories in Iraq deserve the attention of experienced journalists who know the country well, and who care deeply about it.”
• US-Kuwaiti journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin was released after more than 50 days in custody following his March arrest in Kuwait. After his release, Shihab-Eldin and his two sisters were stripped of their Kuwaiti citizenships.Kuwaiti authorities had charged Shihab-Eldin with spreading false information, harming national security and misusing his mobile phone.
• Journalist killings in April included Mohammed Wishah, killed by an Israeli drone strike in Gaza; Ghada Dayekh, Suzan Khalil and Amal Khalil killed by separate Israeli air strikes in Lebanon, with the latter described as a sustained attack; RJ Nichole Ledesma in the Philippines, allegedly during a military anti-insurgency operation in Negros Occidental province, although his employer Altermidya Network said he was in a separate area reporting on the impact of renewable energy projects at the time.
• The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, often a useful source of archived webpages for journalists, is facing blocks from major news publishers including the Guardian, The New York Times and Le Monde.
  The measures are being taken due to concerns over AI bots scraping news publishers’ content from the Wayback Machine.
• In the US, the FBI allegedly began investigating New York Times reporter Elizabeth Williamson after she wrote a story about FBI director Kash Patel’s use of bureau personnel to provide his girlfriend with government security and transportation.
  In response to the allegation, the FBI said that “while investigators were concerned about how the aggressive reporting techniques crossed lines of stalking,” the bureau was not pursuing a case.
  The New York Times said Williamson had “followed normal procedures for a journalist working on a story”, and executive editor Joseph Kahn criticised the FBI’s “attempt to criminalise routine reporting”.
• Press freedom is at a 25-year low, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF). For the first time in the history of the RSF World Press Freedom Index, more than half of the world’s countries fall into the ‘difficult’ or ‘very serious’ press freedom categories.
  RSF said the deterioration of the legal indicator score in more than 60 per cent of countries between 2025 and 2026 was a clear sign of the increasing criminalisation of journalism, even in democracies like Japan, the US and France.
• Nearly half of women journalists report self-censorship on social media, and 22 per cent in their work due to online violence, according to UN Women analysis.
  Nearly a quarter of women journalists and media workers surveyed had been diagnosed with anxiety or depression connected to the online violence they’d experienced.

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