Election 2025
Media bosses urge Albanese to act News Media Bargaining Code
Australia’s top media chiefs are turning up the heat on the Albanese government, demanding a clear deadline to fix the News Media Bargaining Code.
The push, according to Sam Buckingham-Jones in The Australian Financial Review, comes over a year after Meta walked away from publisher deals worth an estimated $70 million annually.
News Corp’s Michael Miller, Nine’s Matt Stanton and Seven’s Jeff Howard say it’s time for more than promises.
ABC election night cops brutal reviews from its own panellists
ABC’s marathon election night coverage has come under fire, not from viewers or rivals, but from its own talent, most notably former Liberal strategist Tony Barry, who didn’t hold back on Facebook after the broadcast.
As James Madden reports in The Australian, Barry declared that “the ABC was the only telecast of six hours with no data, analysis or insight, just endless ‘what I reckon’ journalism. Unwatchable drivel”.
He later confirmed he stood by the spray and hadn’t been hacked.
Legal
Nine paid $700k to silence witness before Roberts-Smith appeal
Nine allegedly shelled out $700,000 to a key witness in the Ben Roberts-Smith saga, just in time to keep her explosive claims about the network and star reporter Nick McKenzie out of court.
Sharri Markson claims on Sky News Australia, that the woman, known as Person 17, had threatened to reveal that Nine unlawfully accessed Roberts-Smith’s legal strategy and claimed to have audio recordings to back it up.
She was also Nine’s own witness in the original case.
Nine accused of threatening woman over leaked Roberts-Smith tape
Nine has been accused of threatening legal action against a woman who claimed to have proof the network unlawfully obtained privileged information during Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation trial.
In a taped call aired in court, Nine journalist Nick McKenzie is heard telling “Person 17” that a friend of Roberts-Smith’s ex-wife was feeding him legal intel, before admitting, “I’ve just breached my f…ing ethics.”
As Derrick Krusche reports in The Daily Telegraph, the woman later emailed Nine saying she had the audio and could expose the breach.
Journalism
Nick Tabakoff steps away from journalism to face cancer battle
After three hospital visits and days of unexplained fevers, veteran journalist Nick Tabakoff finally got the news no one expects: a likely cancer diagnosis.
As Fiona Harari writes in The Australian, it wasn’t until the third visit, following scans, tests and a gut instinct from a late-night GP, that doctors identified advanced kidney cancer.
A longtime associate editor at The Australian and the voice behind Media Diary, Tabakoff quietly kept filing copy while undergoing treatment, choosing privacy over public sympathy.
Tech
Atlassian hit with investor backlash after $15bn wipeout
Atlassian’s bold AI bets and decision to give away a flagship product have backfired, sending its shares tumbling 16.6% and wiping $15 billion from its market value in a single day.
According to Jared Lynch in The Australian, the sell-off followed a weaker-than-expected forecast and a testy investor call, where analysts grilled co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes on growth plans and questioned whether the company’s AI push, including the free release of its Rovo platform, would deliver returns.
With co-founder Scott Farquhar having stepped back from day-to-day leadership, Cannon-Brookes is steering the ship solo through what he described as a “turbulent” global economy.
Google Australia posts higher profit despite dip in local revenue
Google’s Australian arm saw a slide in revenue last year, down $170 million across ads and cloud services, but still managed to lift profits by $22 million, new filings show.
As Sam Buckingham-Jones writes in The Australian Financial Review, the tech giant reported $1.98 billion in revenue and $341 million in profit for 2024, while paying $83 million in tax, $15 million less than the year before.
Despite the local figures, Google’s real earnings from Aussie users are far higher.
Amazon flooded with AI-written ADHD books full of risky advice
Amazon is listing ADHD self-help books that claim expert insights, but many appear to be churned out by AI tools like ChatGPT, raising serious concerns about their accuracy and safety.
The platform has become a dumping ground for low-cost, AI-generated titles, from questionable travel guides to mushroom foraging manuals that flirt with danger.
As Rachel Hall writes in The Guardian, now, books aimed at people managing ADHD are joining the pile.
Social Media
TikTok slapped with $930m fine over data transfers to China
TikTok has been hit with a massive $930 million fine by Ireland’s privacy regulator for failing to shield user data sent to China from potential government snooping.
According to Sam Schechner in The Australian, the Irish Data Protection Commission found the platform couldn’t prove that information shared with China was safe from surveillance under Chinese espionage and cybersecurity laws.
The ruling gives TikTok six months to stop sending user data to China unless it can guarantee EU-level privacy protections, a major setback in its push to reassure Western governments.
Streaming
Rugby league’s media powerbrokers have quietly changed hands
The most significant shake-up in rugby league since the Super League war has flown under the radar, but its impact is about to hit hard.
As Neil Breen writes The Sydney Morning Herald, for nearly three decades, News Corp has pulled the game’s biggest levers, first as co-owner of the NRL and then through its control of broadcast rights via Foxtel and influence in major newspapers.
That era quietly ended last month when Foxtel was sold to global sports streamer DAZN for more than $3 billion, marking News Corp’s exit from the field.
Marketing
Paper Moose’s AI tool aims to challenge marketing research giants
Australian creative agency Paper Moose has launched an AI-powered tool, Moose Review, designed to rival industry leaders like System1 and Kantar in providing campaign insights for marketers.
As Danielle Long writes in The Australian, built to optimise the creative testing process, Moose Review uses synthetic humans trained on marketing science data to test and improve campaign effectiveness before launch.
The tool has already slashed testing turnaround times from days to seconds and boosted the agency’s new business pitch win rate by 50%.
Retail
Australia’s online market flooded with fake ‘ghost’ stores
Over 140 deceptive online stores are operating in Australia, misleading shoppers by posing as local brands while selling poor-quality products or nothing at all.
As Catie McLeod writes in The Guardian Australia, customers who received their purchases described the items as substandard, with many struggling to secure refunds.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is now investigating the growing issue.