Transcription
Um, okay. Um, hi everyone. My name is Amriita Sidu. Um, I am the managing director of Medionet, uh, all the way here from Australia. I also have the privilege to sit on, um, the AMC board.
Now, um, Medionet, I, and I know, um, a lot of you might be familiar with me, and I'm familiar with a lot of you, but, um, just in case, um, a two-minute introduction on MediaTet. We are an Australian-based media intelligence organization, and we provide a suite of PR and communication solutions to, um, organizations, corporate brands in Australia. And that is a mix of, um, press release distribution, media contacts, a very new and innovative kind of, um, print, online, social media monitoring piece, um, and also then media insights and analysis, um, as a way to measure the effectiveness of the media coverage, um, that, uh, an organization gets.
But today, I am here to talk to you about one of the, um, pieces of work that MediaNet does every year as part of our participation in and contribution to the news media landscape in Australia. Every year, we survey working journalists, right? Those on the coalface, not the execs, um, you know, not people in senior management. We, um, survey working journalists and we produce an annual media landscape report, and then we provide that report back into the media industry and to PR and communication professionals as well. But really, we give it back to the journalists who have contributed, and that report really represents their voice.
Now, this survey is a mix of quant and qual-based questions, which Mediaet then applies its measurement methodology to. And in the last couple of years, we have had some really interesting key takeaways and insights from that report, and I'm going to try and unpack a couple of them for you in perhaps a slightly different way to some of the usual report presentation, um, findings, and perhaps a little bit of entertainment along the way.
So today, I am not Amriita from Medionet, but rather I am a business reporter from Australia's most prestigious publication, owned by News Corporation, that is called The Australian. I am one of 1,400 journalists who participated in this survey over the last two years. And I said, I am one of 65% of journalists who work in digital, but I also write for print. So, I guess I'm one of 50% that work for that. And I also podcast once a week. So, I'm one of 12% in that. Okay, hold that thought. More to come. More to come there.
I am only one of 65% of journalists in Australia that are full-time employed. So, all you lovely people in the media intelligence, media measurement space, I'm sure you have a much higher representation and proportion of full-time employment in your organizations rather than just 65% that actually have have that, um, stability of full-time employment. Very proud to say I'm one of 57% of women working in the industry. But geez, when it comes to that pesky pay problem, right, um, we are definitely lagging behind the men. 38% of my male journalist colleagues earn more than $100,000 in Australia compared to only 23% of us women. And when it comes to broadcast, over 44% of people working in broadcast journalism that responded to the survey, um, earn more than $100,000. I didn't even come close to that. I knew I should have gone into broadcast journalism rather than print.
All up, though, there is a mammoth 67% of us that feel underpaid working in the Australian media. 67%. And I told Mediaet in the survey, and a number of my colleagues did too, as well, that money is our greatest challenge, and it has been a very significant challenge for the last three to four years.
But honestly, pay is only one thing, um, that's causing anxiety in the newsroom. There is another thing at the moment, both exciting, kind of annoying, and that's AI. AI is the number one driver of anxiety in the newsrooms. That is what me and 1,400 of my colleagues have told MediaNet. 88% of us are concerned about the impact of generative AI and large language models on the quality and integrity of journalism. 88%. And that is up almost 10% from the same question, um, reply last year. And 45% of us see AI as a threat to public interest journalism. So, one and two as an active threat. Again, that's up from 36% 12 months ago.
Here's a couple of quotes from my colleagues. This one's quite positive and encouraging: "Until ChatGPT can have a meaningful interview with a top CEO, then my job is fine." And then there's this one, which has a very different flavor, talking about "an unreadable mess of automatically generated slop and very convincing fake imagery and videos that persuade people. Finding reliable information online is no longer possible."
It's no wonder that 63% of us working in Australian newsrooms have not personally used Gen AI or any kind of large language model in our work. But actually, that means that close to 40% of us have. And I find that very interesting, given a lot of the media in Australia have very clear either no AI use policies or very strict AI use policies. But I guess that's the beauty of an anonymous survey, right? You get to find out what's really happening.
So, why should all of this skepticism, um, about an anxiety about AI that I'm seeing to you from my journalist point of view, why should that matter to all of you, um, amazing media intelligence communication professionals that are here at this, uh, this lovely summit that we're at? Is because, in this humble journo's point of view, it's fundamentally underlining the core principles of both our industries because we share this beautiful intersection, right, of truth and trust, reputation and reliability. And for those of us working on the coalface, we know trust in the media has declined. We know it. And I can tell you from the analysis of the comments MediaNet did that I provided and other working journalists provided, that it's media fragmentation and the dissemination of misinformation that's the primary cause for that falling trust. 75% of working journalists in Australia, including me, believe that the increase in disinformation or fake news threatened and threatens public interest journalism. "Trust in the media has decreased significantly," one of my colleagues says, "in line with the media's failure to contextualize the biggest issues of our time."
Now let me add to this perspective. Social, social, social. Yes, I am one of 70% of journos who are actively using social media as a story source. But yes, I'm also one of a large number of journos who deleted my X account, along with my colleagues who've really shifted away from that as a platform in the last three years. A 21% drop in usage. So, it's clear that this kind of rise of social as a new source now, kind of fundamentally complicated, um, and underpinned by this AI anxiety, it's eroding public trust in journalism and traditional media reporting, and it creates a really challenging space for accurate reporting every day.
It is a battle to stay relevant for me and my colleagues in the newsroom. Can you imagine waking up every day, going to work, knowing that a big part of your client, your audience, doesn't have trust in you and your work? It's pretty profound, right? And I wonder, is it a paradox that most of us journalists rely on social media as a story source, and yet we attribute a lot of the issues of fragmentation, misinformation, and a decline in media trust to the very social media we rely on? Are we both the problem and the solution?
Now, look, there's a real need and opportunity for communication professionals to step up and build really strong and effective relationships and credibility with journalists, 'cause I'll tell you what, I can't emphasize the importance of those relationships enough. And also, the good old, trusted, reliable press release. They are our number two sources for journalists of accurate, credible news information. So, we need more relationships with organizations such as yourself and your clients, relationships that matter, relationships that we can trust, so that, uh, the information we put out there is also credible and reliable.
Now, just before I wrap up, um, all my fantastic data that I wanted to share with you, I just want to pivot a little bit. I know a lot of you probably think you work really, really hard. And there have been times where you've been at stretch point, but you ain't seen nothing. Every day, I write four to five stories for online, one story for print, I clip audio, I clip video, I share content on social media. And someone recommended to me, a colleague, and I heard this next door as well. I get on Substack. I mean, what even is that, right? What even is that? I'm being asked to do more and more every week with less. I guess I'm not alone, though, because 42% of my colleagues who responded to this survey said that their role had changed fundamentally in some way in the last year. Um, a lot of them have even started taking on a side hustle. And maybe a side hustle ain't that so bad because I clearly don't get paid enough for what I do. I had to find extra ways to make money because I want, I don't want to stop being a journalist. And then there's this one: "Well, clearly I'm, uh, not stupid. Or maybe I am."
Um, okay. I'll now take off my, um, journalist point of view and wrap this up with my Amriita hat back on. So, what does all this, um, data and narrative from our media landscape report mean for, um, those of you in this amazing industry that we get to part be part of your communication efforts or the communication efforts and reputation you're building on behalf of your clients? Well, look, I really passionately and personally believe that effective measurement can and does have this incredible grounding role in the context of this generalized mistrust, um, and a media industry that's in a state of flux. That reliability of measurement and what we do every day in this industry to track and measure and evaluate media coverage from authentic, reliable, trusted sources like The Australian, it is so important because ensuring brands can really understand the impact of their media stories, right? Where their core themes lie, where their actual advocates and detractors are, rather than the fake ones. And I feel it represents a really, really critical way to protect and strengthen the importance of earned media for brands and for organizations.
So, my final comment to you all, I'd like to believe that the reliability of all our amazing measurement methodologies, it can help tip the disruption and the distrust scale back in the favor of both industries, news media and measurement and communications, and tip it back in the favor of reputation and relationships, and back in the favor of truth and trust. Thank you.