TV networks seek promise they will not be caught by digital ‘censorship’ law

Australia’s television networks are concerned their online services could be caught by the Albanese Government’s digital duty-of-care law, which would give Communications Minister Anika Wells the power to ban videos, articles, photographs and posts from the internet she considers pose a serious harm to Australians.

Free TV Australia, the commercial television industry’s lobby association, today urged Ms Wells to explicitly exclude TV networks and registered news outlets from the law, which would include some of the toughest rules covering online content in the Western World.

“Professionally produced news and journalism shouldn’t be swept up in a bill built for algorithmic social media harms,” Free TV chief executive Bridget Fair told The Nightly.

“Good journalism can be confronting or upsetting and deal with difficult issues but a story shouldn’t be ‘harmful content’ just because it’s uncomfortable or someone disagrees with it. That’s a job for editorial judgment and classification law, not an eSafety takedown power.”

Because television is often watched over the internet, it would fall under the powers of a law the Trump Administration complained would “enforce vague definitions of ‘harm’” that could be used to enforce “viewpoint-based censorship”.

“Such measures could result in downgraded visibility and stifle organic growth for creators and speech of independent journalists due to overly aggressive ‘safety’ filters,” the US embassy in Canberra said overnight.

‘Super intelligence’

The American intervention came hours before Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attended a reception in New York with President Donald Trump, who has ordered his government to use the term “super intelligence” rather than artificial intelligence and told the United Nations the emerging technology should not be regulated.

Mr Albanese said the law, which the Coalition also opposes, would allow people to control what they are shown on the internet.

“This is about giving power back to Australians rather than big global tech companies,” he told reporters in New York.

He later posted a photograph of himself with the President on Instagram, which would be caught by the digital law.

Still in draft form, it would make three major changes: the internet would have to become a “safe online environment”; children would have to be protected from pornography and other material the government considers harmful; and commercial features used to encourage online usage would be prohibited for under-16s, according to a summary by Johnson Winter Slattery, a law firm.

The law would ban the promotion or celebration of sexual violence, harassment, terrorism, drug use, general crime and “abhorrent violent conduct” from the internet in Australia. It would give the communications minister the power to ban online content he or she believes may cause “serious harm”, although her decision could be vetoed by Parliament.

The penalty for failing to comply would be as high as $109 million. The law would extend far beyond popular social media networks such as Facebook, Snapchat and X to search engines, websites, apps and even email and instant messaging services, according to Johnson Winter Slattery.

Constitutional breach

An exemption for television networks only covers shows that have been broadcast over the airwaves, an increasingly outdated definition of television in the digital era.

Free TV wants all news outlets covered by a mandatory bargaining system with the large social media companies to be exempted, a step that would protect Southern Cross Media, which publishes The Nightly, and almost every other newspaper and media outlet in Australia, from the Sydney Morning Herald to the Canungra Times.

Without the exemption, the law could breach the constitutional protection for communicating about government and political matters established by the High Court 34 years ago, Free TV said in a submission to the government today.

“In the absence of an exemption, the bill would add an unnecessary layer of regulatory expense and complication for Registered News Businesses, which are already subject to financial challenges that the Government has already sought to address through legislative intervention,” the submission says.

Last week Liberal leader Angus Taylor said the law would give the Government “a blank cheque for political censorship”.

The Coalition’s opposition means the Government may rely on the Australian Greens to pass the law. Last week the party’s spokesperson for Communications, Sarah Hanson-Young, said it was “time to end the ‘doom scroll’ and give every Australian a safe experience online without the big tech’s dangerous and addictive technology dictating what is in our feeds”.