Australia has several agencies with a brief to monitor and control the performance and role of the news media, including the ACMA, ACCC, and the Australian Press Council. These bodies adjudicate and produce reports of various kinds on a frequent basis under a variety of legal frameworks and self or co-regulatory codes of practice.
One continual source of “inside stories” on the media as well as politics, business, and environment is the web publication crickey.com.au. Most of its pages are available to subscribers only, with an annual subscription costing AUD 199.
Arguably, the best-known programme is Media Watch on ABC Television, which has been shown for around 30 years. It has a weekly 15–20-minute programme slot right after ABC’s major investigative television programme Four Corners, on Monday nights at 21:15 o’clock. Media Watch comments on inaccurate and sloppy journalism and unethical conduct such as plagiarism. The programme has had profile presenters, either famous journalists with years of experience or media lawyers. The programme has been responsible for consistently producing major stories on media corruption and malpractice. Often, these journalistic watchdogs seem more effective than the watchdogs themselves and are responsible for triggering more formal judicial investigations, including royal commissions.
Other more recent and smaller, independent publications undertake the watchdog role to varying degrees, including The Monthly, The Saturday Paper, The New Daily, and the local edition of The Guardian.
