Report: Strong Left-Wing Bias in Australia’s Digital Media
Australia’s digital news skews strongly to the left; ABC TV is favoured by left-wing viewers; and people with right-wing views tend to be stronger advocates for impartial, neutral and balanced news. These are among the many findings of a comprehensive report on news media consumption in Australia released last month.
In June, the Digital News Report: Australia 2021 was published by the University of Canberra’s News and Media Research Centre. Tens of thousands of Australians were surveyed for the study.
In the report, 25 news brands were located along a left-to-right continuum according to the mean political views of their audience. Only two of those brands — SkyNews.com.au and HeraldSun.com.au — fell marginally to the right of the average ‘centrist’ Australian (the dotted line, circled in red, below). The other 23 brands were found to be left-of-centre.
Among the most left-wing sources were the Guardian Australia online, Crikey, The Conversation and The Sunday Paper online. The taxpayer-funded ABC News Online — which had the biggest audience of the websites included in the survey — ranked further left than CNN.com.
In measuring offline news brands, the spread was more even-handed, with 11 brands falling to the left and nine to the right of an average Australian news consumer. As noted in the study, “online news brands and public service broadcasters are more likely to have left-leaning audiences.”
The report was highlighted by Sky News presenter Jack Houghton last week. Houghton proposed that the Canberra-based study is a vindication for his network, following accusations by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd that Sky News encouraged “far-right extreme views”.
“Characterising our nearly two million subscribers as ‘far right extremists’ is a little unfair,” Houghton protested.
“And if you are one of those people Kevin has slandered over and over and over again as being a ‘radical’, ‘out of touch with mainstream views’ and ‘downright dangerous’, well I have some news for you: he’s wrong.”
Houghton explained that, “there is indeed, as Kevin suggests, a dramatic ideological over-saturation in digital media, but it certainly isn’t to the right, politically speaking.”
The study also revealed that viewers of the publicly-funded broadcasters SBS TV and ABC TV tend to be notably more left-wing than all other brands studied, including channels Seven, Nine, Ten, Sky and Fox. Around 40 percent of SBS and ABC viewers are left-wing, compared to just 23-30 percent for other networks.
This appears to be further evidence that the billion-dollar-a-year ABC is neglecting its charter which requires the broadcaster to “gather and present news and information with due impartiality”; “not unduly favour one perspective over another”; and “present a diversity of perspectives so that, over time, no significant strand of thought or belief within the community is knowingly excluded or disproportionately represented”.
The University of Canberra report also exposed a widening divide between left-wing and right-wing news consumers regarding the importance of impartiality, neutrality and balance in journalism.
Those with right-wing views were far more likely to say that news should be impartial, neutral and balanced than left-wing news consumers. According to the report:
Right-wing news consumers are more likely to say that news should reflect a range of views so people can make up their own mind (85%), than left-wing (72%).
Left-wing respondents (39%) are more likely to say there are some issues where it makes no sense for news outlets to try to be neutral, than right-wing (21%).
In relation to news outlets remaining neutral on every issue, right-wing news consumers (72%) are more supportive than left-wing (54%).
Even more markedly, 87% of right-wing news consumers agree that news outlets should give equal time to all sides, compared to only 69% of left-wing.
This data runs counter to the view, expressed by Mr Rudd, that politically conservative people — so-called “far-right extremists” — tend to be narrow-minded or in search of confirmation bias. Rather, it would suggest that in 2021, these qualities are much more likely to be found among the progressive-minded.
The full report can be found at the Analysis and Policy Observatory website.
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Image courtesy of BigStock.
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Self evident, but confirmation !
This Study does not show the political orientation of the publications – it is a study of the numbers of the *AUDIENCE* of these publications skewed by the Left-wing make-up of the participants of the survey which completely negates the conclusions of this article.
The problem is there were 41% more Left-wing participants in this study than Right-wing which resulted in the political orientation of the audiences of each publication skewing more Left-wing as a result.
What highlights the incorrect conclusion of this article the most though is what the graph of TV viewers and newspaper readers shows (which this article conveniently ignored). As you can see in the link below, TV and newspaper audiences were skewed significantly more right-wing than left-wing – despite there being far more Left-wing participants in the survey. Particularly Sky News and channels 7, 9 and Fox News.
The Murdoch-owned “The Australian” and the “Daily Telegraph” also show up as significantly to the Right and even ABC Radio is Right of Center!The reason this survey has a significantly higher proportion of Left-wing participants than Right-wing participants is due to the fact it was an online survey.
Right-wing users skew towards TV and newsprint as they tend towards the older, less tech-savvy demographic so are fewer in number in this survey than the Left-wing “digital-native” participants who naturally participate more in online surveys.The study admits as much stating that in this study, 31% identify as Left-wing while only 22% are Right-wing. So no wonder these graphs show the audiences of these publications as skewing more to the Left.
There were 41% more Left-wing participants in this Survey! So as you can see, the study does not support the conclusion that Australian Media is more Left-wing biased – if anything it shows that Australian TV channels and Newspapers are far more Right-wing biased (if judged by their audience) on average.
https://www.facebook.com/MrKRudd/posts/348489806647287?comment_id=348493386646929
Hi Mart,
Thanks for your detailed comment — a few clarifications may help here.
Firstly, I was quite explicit in the article about the distinction between online and offline audiences, and I acknowledged the digital nature of the study sample. So your point about right-leaning demographics being underrepresented online is noted — and already addressed.
However, it’s worth restating the basic premise: a publication’s audience generally reflects its ideological orientation. For example, I doubt many Sky News viewers are swinging Labor-Greens voters, just as I’d be surprised if Crikey had a large Coalition fanbase. These are reasonable generalisations, not wild assumptions. If you believe the political makeup of an outlet’s audience doesn’t broadly mirror the tone of its content, the burden of proof rests with you — and I’m happy to review any evidence you offer.
You argue that the political makeup of survey respondents skews the results. But that’s only relevant if the study was claiming to assess the political leanings of Australians. It wasn’t. The study was measuring the political leanings of the audiences of specific media outlets. That’s a big difference. If, despite being outnumbered by left-wing participants, Sky News and the Daily Telegraph still show a right-leaning audience, that actually strengthens the study’s credibility — not weakens it.
You also point to ABC Radio being just right of centre in the offline data. True — but you’ve ignored that ABC TV falls clearly left, and ABC online even further. If we aggregate all three (radio, TV, and digital), the ABC still ends up well left of centre overall. And that’s the central point: a taxpayer-funded broadcaster should be seen to represent the political diversity of Australians — not tilt in favour of one side.
Finally, if you’re looking for other indicators of political bias, there’s the 2013 QUT study showing that nearly three-quarters of ABC journalists voted Labor or Greens. And there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence of ideological slant in ABC coverage, some of which has been documented here: https://dailydeclaration.org.au/?s=abc+bias.
So while I appreciate the pushback, I stand by the original conclusion: the ABC’s audience — and therefore its content — leans left, and that poses real questions about fairness in taxpayer-funded media.
Exactly as described by the previous comment.
The article focuses on audiences. It does not evaluate the bias of the different outlets, it only shows what kind of audience each outlet has.
Trying to derive the bias of each outlet just looking the audience, without doing an impartial assessment of their content is misleading.
IN response to the above comment… For the most left wing publications, audience political bias correlates to content political bias. Strong left wing audience do NOT tolerate anything other than their own echo chamber publications. They can’t seem to cope with any real challenge to their views.
Kevin Rudd is an idiot. A pompous, no talent hack with an ego the size of a mountain.
Australia is most definitely awash with and under the spell of left-wing ‘news’ outlets, heck it is our whole society unfortunately.
It amazes me how stupid (ideologically captured?) most left-wing commenters are. They have this crazy notion that anything right of communism is Nazism and that anything Rupert Murdoch has ownership of delivers his personal desires and views and is poisoned information, thus NONE of them actually view anything that doesn’t reek of their own odious ideology. Outlets like the ABC (which we are all FORCED to fund), which a lot of us so-called ‘Nazis’ (called by the looney left because we disagree with them), do consume even though they are liars and as leftist as they come. We like to know what the looney left are saying so we can be informed and not just scream loudest for our ‘team’.
Oh BTW, please follow the link that PaulC provided and have a good laugh at the nonsense KRudd presents as refutation of the graph presented by Sky News and be amazed at the leftists responses…well perhaps not amazed as it’s nothing we haven’t seen before from these types.