Who Really Controls Australia's Media Landscape?

Australia ranks second only to Brazil in media concentration, with a small number of billionaires controlling the vast majority of what the country reads, watches, and scrolls through — a situation critics say is distorting public debate and accelerating the rise of populist politics.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp holds approximately two-thirds of Australia's newspaper market and a similar share of online news, as well as full ownership of Sky News Australia. The media mogul paid roughly US$787 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems — a case that would have required testimony about the company's election coverage. News Corp was also central to the UK phone-hacking scandal, with the company paying approximately £1.9 billion in settlements and legal costs. Critics have long argued that Murdoch's outlets have systematically downplayed climate science and used their reach to amplify fear-driven political campaigns.

Beyond Murdoch, Seven West Media — backed in part by mining and media billionaires Kerry Stokes and Gina Rinehart — controls the Channel 7 network, metropolitan and regional radio stations, and several newspaper titles. Nine Entertainment, also supported by significant private investment, operates Channel 9 alongside mastheads The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, as well as radio stations including 3AW and 2GB.

Combined, analysts estimate these three conglomerates account for between 80 and 90 per cent of Australia's total media output.

The digital sphere presents its own concentration concerns. Major platforms including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter) are controlled by a small number of tech billionaires — most notably Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Critics argue these platforms deploy engagement-maximising algorithms that amplify divisive content and harvest user data for commercial purposes.

The practical consequences of this ownership landscape have surfaced in recent political debate. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, whose party has received investment from Gina Rinehart, has called for SBS to be defunded and for the ABC to be placed behind a paywall. Opponents argue those positions align with the commercial interests of private media proprietors who compete directly with Australia's public broadcasters.

The ABC and SBS remain the country's largest media organisations not controlled by private capital. Advocates for press freedom warn that without robust public broadcasting, Australia's information landscape would be left almost entirely in the hands of a few wealthy individuals.

Reform options put forward by media analysts and advocacy groups include tighter ownership caps preventing single entities from dominating multiple platforms, and increased public funding for independent journalism to broaden the diversity of voices available to Australian audiences. Australia's cross-media ownership rules were last overhauled in 2017, when restrictions were relaxed — a change critics say accelerated the current level of consolidation.