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July 17, 2026 — 5:00am
In this week’s On Background, a look at Gina Rinehart’s commitment to freedom of speech, a suspicious new player in Australian political media, more changes at Guardian Australia, and a rare meeting of major news outlet bosses.
Under the eye
Gina Rinehart has at least some of the outward hallmarks of a free speech champion. She has donated millions to the right-wing think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, which supports freedom of speech as a central tenet of its existence.
In April, she argued: “If we want to save our country, we need to love it so much that we have the character to stand up and speak truthfully, without hiding in fear of being derided, insulted or called names like ‘racists’.”
But underneath it all, Rinehart has one of the nation’s most prolific media monitoring operations that takes a rather assertive approach to defending her image in the public eye.
While she urged Australians not to shy away from being called names like “racists”, less than one month ago, her team demanded a retraction and apology from a relatively minor independent podcast and substack operation New Politics for suggesting just that. And they got one.
At the end of June, New Politics, a reader-funded politics podcast, began an episode with an apology for a throwaway line suggesting Australia’s richest person shared One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s “racist ideology”.
“Those comments should not have been made. They are not true, and we retract them entirely and apologise,” said co-host and editor Eddy Jokovich on the following episode.
The following week, the pair told listeners they hadn’t published their next regular Saturday episode because they had been tied up in legal issues with “certain people trying to shut us up”.
It’s not an isolated example. Rinehart’s media team are known to send extensive responses to articles she takes issue with that mention her by name.
Her PR manager James Radford recently took issue with independent journalist and Australia Institute staffer Amy Remeikis likening his boss to a “Bond villain” in an article for The New Daily, listing her five news items in his email proving why the comparison doesn’t fit. That one went ignored.
Other journalists, particularly some of those on the ABC’s radio waves, tell On Background they too have found themselves on the receiving end of “policing” by Rinehart’s media team for using loose language when referring to her, often seeking on-air apologies or corrections. “It’s to let us know they’re listening closely,” one on-air host said.
Rinehart has deep media interests in Australia herself. Her companies spend millions advertising with News Corp, where she receives generally positive coverage, holds more-than-friendly relations with some of its personalities (Rita Panahi’s birthday boat treat), and is now a de facto major investor in Southern Cross Media, the owner of Network Seven, The West Australian and Triple M, via former Seven executive Bruce McWilliam.
A spokesperson for Hancock Prospecting said it respectfully engages with publishers when it finds false or defamatory comments or misinformation.
“Journalists and publishers have an ethical obligation to ensure what they publish is truthful and verifiable. They cannot simply publish false claims or disinformation and present them as facts, as this activist podcast did,” they said.
We aren’t suggesting that Rinehart is wrong on the facts in any of her legal notices, or that they were sent for some ulterior motive. But for a billionaire who has made such major contributions to the IPA, her strategy is hardly that of a free speech maximalist.
A new kind of news
The US-founded scoop machine Politico isn’t the only outlet coming to Australia this year. In fact, a new entrant to the media world is already live. That would be One News Australia, little-known outlet that is rather less august than the big red politics and policy outlet.
One News’ heavily orange-branded website claims to be a serious outlet that “reports the news straight”. It sells itself as being “for Australians who think common sense went missing around 2013”. Wow, what a win for the Kevin Rudd stans!
But despite the orange ‘ON’ logo, the actual One Nation party insists it has no involvement with the website and its affiliated social media pages, which have begun picking up a decent following.
Those social media pages have an interesting history. The current One News Australia Facebook page was, in fact, rebranded from the One Nation Supporters Network just two months ago, with an associated company lodged with the corporate regulator in May as well.
So while Hanson does have an expanding media empire, which includes her Please Explain video series and the Super Progressive Movie, a serious, hard-hitting news website isn’t on the list just yet. One run by some fellow travellers, on the other hand? That’s there in orange and white.
Cartoonish headache for Guardian’s new editor
Finally appointed on a full-time basis in June (as foreshadowed by this column a few months back), Guardian Australia editor David Munk is already having to face some harsh realities.
Last week, former political cartoonist of the year Fiona Katauskas was told that Munk wanted to go in a different direction, and that her services were no longer required at the end of her contract.
The Guardian had already moved Katauskas to a six-month contract earlier this year when former editor Lenore Taylor was still at the joint and Munk was still in the UK.
Fellow cartoonist First Dog on the Moon and some other Guardian staff were also shifted to the six-month contracts earlier this year. At the time, staff said it appeared to be a prelude to cost-cutting.
More recently, an internal financial update showed advertising bookings down around 20 per cent for a second successive year, staff say. This trend isn’t limited to The Guardian, however. It’s a tough time for the media all round.
Staff were reassured by senior managers after Taylor’s exit that there would be no mass redundancies, but that there may be some “belt tightening”. It may not be redundancies, but it is belt tightening for sure. This month, The Guardian said it was creating 55 new jobs across the globe in the coming year, with Australia to become “a global centre of excellence for social hosts”.
With Munk now in place, there are expectations of a looming reshuffle of the editorial ranks. Munk this week confirmed the exit of co-deputy editor Patrick Keneally, who is moving to South Korea. For now, the outlet will continue with just one, Gabrielle Jackson, On Background was told.
The Guardian declined to comment.
Expect fireworks
This coming Tuesday, something as rare as a blue moon is going to occur. The chief executives of four of Australia’s largest media companies are coming together on stage to discuss the future of the industry and the numerous challenges it faces.
That includes the bosses of Australia’s two largest commercial media companies, Michael Miller of News Corp and Matt Stanton of Nine (the owner of this masthead), alongside the managing directors of our public broadcasters, the ABC’s Hugh Marks and the SBS’s Jane Palfreyman, who was recently given the job on a full-time basis.
The quartet took time out of their busy schedules on Tuesday for a practice run, with the ABC’s Hamish Macdonald the panel’s moderator. Word was that the dynamic was “interesting”, to say the least.
All of this is happening at the revamped Andrew Olle Media Lecture, a charity event founded by ABC Radio Sydney in 1996 to honour the late Andrew Olle, a broadcaster who died the year before after a brain tumour. The rethink of this year’s event to include an industry-wide panel is said to be the brainchild of ABC chair Kim Williams. This idea has been better received than his decision to appear on Chris Kenny’s Sky News program on Thursday evening.
The main speech this year will be handled by Alessandra Galloni, the editor-in-chief of Reuters, and the current boss of the ABC’s incoming news director, Simon Robinson. The ABC announced Galloni as this year’s main speaker last month just one week after Robinson’s appointment was made public. Coincidence? Probably.
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