Who's actually paying for the media wildflowers?

In my last column, I argued that PR has a maths problem: an earned media renaissance built on top of a shrinking journalism workforce, and an industry that too often behaves like a passenger when it should act like a stakeholder.

The metaphor is simple: a beekeeper who poisons the wildflowers gets one good season of honey, then nothing.

So today I ask the obvious follow-up: who's actually paying to keep the wildflowers alive? We know it isn't enough, and it isn't on time. But it's worth unpacking the efforts that are being made.

The funding situation in Australia

On 22 June, the News Bargaining Incentive in Australia was delayed again. The policy is designed to push major platforms into contributing to the journalism their services benefit from and circulate. Platforms that strike commercial deals with publishers pay 1.5 per cent of their Australian revenue; those that don’t face a 2.25 per cent levy that applies whether or not they carry news. The government estimates the scheme could raise between A$200 million to A$250 million a year, redistributed back to the sector.

The bill had been expected before the Australian Parliament's winter recess. Instead it's been pushed to the other side of the break, with the government confirming it's still working through consultation responses and aiming to introduce it when parliament returns on 11 August.

It's worth remembering this isn’t one side's project. The News Media Bargaining Code it builds on began under the Morrison government in 2020, when the ACCC was directed to draft it. The Incentive is the Albanese government's attempt to close a loophole in that same code, the one that lets platforms dodge their obligations simply by removing news from their services. Two governments, one structural problem they've both tried to solve.

Media leaders didn't take the delay lying down. News Corp Australia's Executive Chairman Michael Miller called it deeply disappointing, warning that after two and a half years since Meta walked away, further inactivity risks fewer Australian stories. Australian media company Nine reiterated its preference for platforms to simply come to the table and do deals.

The platforms, unsurprisingly, see it very differently. Meta has called the Incentive "irrational and discriminatory", arguing it’s a broad tax with little connection to news. Google says it rejects the need for it, pointing to commercial deals it already has in place. That tension, publishers wanting the mechanism and platforms resisting it, is exactly why it keeps stalling.

The regional policy race

The delay matters because of what it sits on top of. Australia's federal budget put fresh money behind AAP, the ABC, and SBS. The News Media Assistance Program has backed regional, suburban, multicultural, and First Nations publishers. Canada has opened consultations on extending its journalism labour tax credit to audio and audio-visual news production.

And Australia isn't writing this alone; it just isn't leading anymore. Look across the region and the same admission keeps surfacing, with our neighbours often further down the road.

Indonesia passed its version and put it to work. President Regulation 32 of 2024 came fully into force in August that year, requiring digital platforms to enter agreements with Press Council-verified publishers, whether paid licences, profit-sharing, or news-user data sharing, with Google and Meta the primary targets. It was modelled on Australia’s code and Canada’s. The template we wrote is now being used against the platforms while ours keeps slipping.

New Zealand is the closer mirror. On 2 July, the government confirmed it remained committed to progressing its Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, redrawn to align more tightly with the Australian code, forcing the major platforms to strike deals with local newsrooms. It has split the governing coalition, with ACT refusing to back it from inside government. But the detail that should catch every reader here is this: the New Zealand bill isn’t limited to Google and Meta. It is drafted to cover all tech companies, including those developing AI products.

Different countries, different instruments, the same underlying admission that the old commercial model is not paying for enough public interest journalism on its own.

The blind spot in the funding model

There's also a gap worth naming, because it sits right in my field, and that of many reading this. The Incentive only targets search and social platforms. AI chat tools that summarise the news, and that a growing share of people are beginning to use alongside or instead of search, are not captured at all.

So even as the policy tries to make one set of platforms pay for the journalism they graze on, another set is quietly grazing the same wildflowers, unnamed. For an industry increasingly focused on AI visibility, that is not a footnote. It is the next version of the same problem. New Zealand has at least started drafting for it; Australia hasn’t.

Journalism as part of the supply chain

For those in PR not paying attention, now's the time to start. This isn't abstract policy or stargazing. It's the direct operating environment. The foundations. The wildflowers.

And it extends further than journalists and publishers. It reaches SEO agencies selling backlinks off the back of coverage they never funded. Media monitoring services that, under whatever logic, don't provide staff the subscriptions to get past the paywalls they're monitoring. AI-answer optimisation built on scraping reporting nobody paid for. Brands demanding tier-one coverage while running every dollar of budget through the platforms hollowing those outlets out.

Essentially, if your work depends on journalists existing, specialist rounds surviving, trade outlets covering your clients' sectors, regional mastheads staying open, or independent publishers having enough capacity to commission original reporting...

...then journalism funding is now part of your commercial supply chain.

We don't need to become policy lobbyists. Change starts smaller. At a minimum, we should understand who's funding the system we pitch into every day, and what happens when nobody pays enough.

And we should contribute where we can. My last piece suggested every PR agency subscribe to the outlets they monitor. That's an obvious starting point.

Canada and Australia offer two useful case studies of governments showing their working. Indonesia and New Zealand offer two more, closer to home. But in Australia, the single mechanism designed to bring the major platforms back into the funding equation is the one that keeps slipping. And the newest players in the room aren't even in the equation yet.

Jasmin Hyde is the founder of Hyde & Seek Communications, a Melbourne-based strategic communications consultancy advising founders, executives and organisations where reputation has real commercial consequences. The firm focuses on earned media, executive positioning and digital PR for the AI search era, working across tech, healthcare, sustainability and social impact.

After a decade advising leaders across government, corporate and high-trust sectors, Jasmin started Hyde & Seek on the view that the industry doesn’t need more volume. It needs better stories, and the right people getting the right kind of attention.

She writes regularly on the shifting economics of earned media, the changing role of PR in an AI-mediated information ecosystem, and why credibility can’t be bought.

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