PIJI has submitted its recommendations to the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (ACMA) consultation on its News diversity and localism measurement framework.
In a wide-ranging and thorough submission drawing on PIJI’s extensive news mapping activity over the past four years, PIJI suggests a number of ways in which ACMA can better define data and organisational classifications.
PIJI’s comments in the submission include:
- A need for guiding principles, such as ‘standardisation’ or consistency (ideally to enable global benchmarking), and strong governance practices, including a scheduled review every two years.
- A staged build and review roll out may be the best approach to ensure the framework is fit for purpose and provides flexibility for some areas of data capture and analysis.
- Consideration is needed on the appropriate long-term structures of data collection, analysis and ownership.
- Further consultation with industry should be undertaken.
- PIJI remains committed to adding to the long-term, evidence-based assessment into the health of public interest journalism, recognising ongoing and increasing demand for its independent work; we are currently developing potential future iterations of PIJI.
The submission includes 34 technical recommendations in total. PIJI looks looks forward to reading the feedback from other industry participants.