Factcheck: News Corp isn’t excluded from subsidies because they’re conservative – it’s because they’re foreign-owned.

Last week, Sky News host Andrew Bolt said 

What almost no Australian knows is that [the Albanese government] pays the salaries of 2,000 journalists in nearly 200 private news rooms under its $67 million journalism assistance fund.” 

It includes $16 million for the Nine Media Group, $11 million for Channel 7 and its new Southern Cross Group, grants for regional and grants for ethnic papers, and a whole range of exclusively left-wing outlets like Crikey, The Conversation, Mumbrella, The Saturday Paper, Mamamia.

Not $1 to Sky News of course or any of the wicked Murdoch papers.

I think it’s a corrupting influence because it makes journalists and media outlets look to the government and not want to offend the government.

Former Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes followed, 

I can tell you there won’t be a conservative one, they’ll all have pink hair and septum rings.  

So what is the Journalism Assistance Fund, and are Bolt and Hughes right that it’s being funnelled towards left-wing outlets? 

What is the Journalism Assistance Fund? 

The Journalism Assistance Fund was launched in November of last year, as part of the government’s broader news media assistance program. That broader program was launched in troubled times for the news industry. Meta/Facebook had pulled out of its $70 million in funding agreements with Australian news organisations and AAP (which provides local news stories to many outlets) had only recently been saved from bankruptcy. 

The Journalism Assistance Fund subsidises up to $13,000 of a journalist’s salary for three years, for a total of $39,000 per full-time worker. In total, $74.4 million from the fund has been allocated to 185 newsrooms across Australia. 

Is it funnelling money to left-wing publications?  

In short, no. 

First of all, the readers and watchers of Nine and Seven (the two largest recipients of the fund) tend to be to the right of the average Australian, according to data from the 2026 Digital News Report. Leaving aside whether or not the other outlets Bolt mentioned – including Crikey, The Conversation, Mumbrella, The Saturday Paper, and Mamamia – are actually left-wing, there’s a bigger problem here. 

It is true, as Andrew Bolt notes, that “not $1” went to Sky News or any other News Corp newspaper. But that’s not because they’re conservative – it’s because they’re foreign-owned. 

The Journalism Assistance Fund has few eligibility requirements: a recipient must have an ABN, an Australian bank account and must produce and publish “core news content” that is distributed digitally.  

But one of its short list of requirements is that a recipient cannot be a “foreign controlled entity”. This prevents The Guardian and Daily Mail, each owned by British trusts, from being eligible, as well as the American-owned News Corp, which produces Sky News and all of the “wicked Murdoch papers”. 

There are also no requirements for the recipients to have any particular political outlook or editorial slant – or even to have pink hair and a septum piercing as Hughes suggests. In fact, the Epoch Times, which strongly supports Donald Trump and spreads the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, has been allotted $328,000.  

Verdict: False 

Is it influencing journalism? 

The only requirement that the Journalism Assistance Fund places on its subsidies is that journalists produce core news content, that “reports, investigates or explains issues or events that are relevant to engaging Australians in public debate … or current issues or events of public significance”. 

It cannot go towards producing sponsored, lifestyle, real estate, entertainment or celebrity news, or opinion and editorial pieces. There are no requirements for outlets to align with the Australian government. 

Critics of the fund would argue that, even without any requirements, the mere receipt of government funding is likely to push journalists towards supporting government positions.  

But the subsidy isn’t a big cheque that journalists receive in the mail; it’s a subsidy paid to the media company as a whole. Most journalists could go about their jobs without any knowledge that the Commonwealth was supporting their wages.  

And without any way for governments to cancel funding to outlets that criticise them, there’s no incentive for those outlets to shift their reporting to avoid antagonising the government. 

Verdict: False