A step forward for news funding mechanisms

Last week we published the fully-designed copy of our new report, Funding the Way Forward for Australian News: A Review of Local and International News Funding Distributions Mechanisms by Julie Eisenberg and Tamara Marcus. It’s a companion piece to Julie’s earlier report for CMT, Finding a Way Forward for Australian News: An Examination of Local and International Regulatory Interventions. Both are available from the CMT website.

The research for both reports was prompted by the impending failure of the News Media Bargaining Code, following its first-round success in securing substantial funding from Google and Meta. In 2024, Meta made it clear that it did not intend to enter another round of deals, and if the government tried to force its hand, it would remove news content altogether from its Australian service. In response, the government has proposed the News Bargaining Incentive (NBI) as an extension of the News Media Bargaining Code. The NBI would give platforms a tax benefit for financial contributions to the news industry while imposing a tax liability on those who do not meet minimum investment levels.

For our second report, we step back – for the time being – from the sticky issue of how regulation actually gets the funds from digital platforms to Australian news businesses. Instead, the report focusses on the way the money generated through a tax (or some comparable mechanism) is handled and distributed. This is important because an effective and legitimate distribution mechanism will be required for any scheme that pools industry funds. And it has just as much relevance for government funding as for industry funding. 

Funding the Way Forward therefore looks at the ‘back-end’ of direct news funding interventions: structures for making funding decisions, transparency measures, and what recipients have to do to confirm funds were spent as intended. It also examines how different schemes ensure that news content is free of influence from the funder. Julie and Tamara look at various international approaches for news funding as well as Australian government schemes to support news and the arrangements in adjacent sectors such as creative arts, the screen industry and academic research – all of which enable funding decisions to be made at arm’s length from government.

Fortuitously, the research has come at just the right moment. The research by Julie and Tamara helped us shape a submission to Treasury’s consultation paper on the NBI. In particular, we encouraged the government to allow platforms to make contributions via intermediary bodies that are independent of both platform companies and government. We drew on the example of the Canadian Journalism Collective, set up by Google to provide funding of CAN$100 million per year for five years. This approach fits with the NBI design because this form of ‘other expenditure’ could be taken into account and given the same favourable treatment as deals made directly between platforms and news businesses. Given the potential for this approach to provide assistance beyond the largest Australian news businesses, we’ve encouraged Treasury to resist imposing a cap on the extent to which these payments can be counted as part of a platform’s compliance obligations.

Other aspects of our recommendations to government can be found in our submission. Meanwhile, the research report has already sparked interest, with Julie presenting at a panel for the International Institute of Communications’ Media and Digital Communications Forum in Sydney on 11 February, and my participation in a workshop on News Futures organised by the University of Canberra last week. Stand by for a new podcast sometime soon!

References 

CMT page with copies of the two reports: https://www.uts.edu.au/research/centres/centre-media-transition/projects-and-research/a-way-forward-for-australian-news  

Guardian Australia article on the News Bargaining Incentive: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/12/meta-could-face-millions-in-fines-for-not-signing-content-deals-in-australia  

CMT submission to Treasury consultation: https://www.uts.edu.au/research/centres/centre-media-transition/centre-contributions-policy  

Treasury page with copy of the News Bargaining Incentive consultation paper: https://consult.treasury.gov.au/c2025-718159