LAST WEEK, News Corp’s newspapers The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, The Courier Mail and The Adelaide Advertiser caused controversy by publishing front page “exclusives” and “special reports” alleging that more gas is needed to avoid electricity blackouts in the future.
If readers turned the page and read the fine print, they would learn that this so-called “news” was actually not news. It was an advertorial (a fancy word for an advertisement), paid for by – you guessed it – the fossil fuel industry.
@Joshi
One solution could be to make terms such as ‘news’ or ‘current affairs’ or ‘journalism’ protected terms.
Anybody can claim to be a “nutritionist” but only those with actual recognised qualifications may describe themselves as “dieticians”.
The news media could be given tax breaks under the strict condition they produce only accurate and unbiased journalism.
“Advertorials”, and “puff pieces” would be banned and if a news organisation broke the rules, they would be fined heavily and lose their tax breaks.
Thoughts?
@RaymondPierreL3
It’s an interesting idea, I honestly don’t think there is an easy solution here though. Balancing freedom of speech with controlling false and misleading information is a supremely difficult and as yet unsolved problem.