News Bias and Media Literacy

As pandemic lockdown rules disappeared, crime rates had begun to ease. But instead of reporting that, 3AW hosts focused entirely on the fact that the overall three-year crime rate was up, "firing up" on air to make listeners feel like the government was hiding a violent crime wave.

The reason the three-year average was so high is that breaches of pandemic lockdown rules were recorded as criminal offences. Thousands of Victorians were fined or charged for breaching Chief Health Officer directions: leaving home without a permitted reason, travelling beyond the 5km radius, breaking curfew, and all of those were counted in the crime statistics. When you add thousands of pandemic-related infractions to the data, the overall "crime rate" spikes dramatically, even though the community wasn't experiencing a wave of violence or property crime.

3AW hosts conveniently omitted this context, framing the inflated figures as evidence of a violent crime wave the government was trying to downplay. The goal was to keep the outrage loop going so listeners stayed tuned in through the funeral home and hearing aid ads.

Sky News heavily amplified a narrative that Melbourne was "under siege" from "African gangs." They repeatedly broadcast footage of a few isolated incidents, most notably a brawl at the Moomba festival, and framed them as evidence of a city-wide, racialised crime wave.

Victoria Police data at the time showed that overall youth crime in Victoria was actually falling. While there was a localised issue with a small number of disaffected youth, they represented a tiny fraction of total offenders. By repeatedly showing the same footage and framing it as an existential threat, Sky News created the illusion of a widespread crisis that didn't exist in the data, stoking fear and damaging community relations.

Sky News repeatedly broadcast the same CCTV footage of a small number of youth offenders committing serious crimes: carjackings, home invasions, and assaults, and framed them as evidence of a systemic youth crime epidemic out of control under the Labor state government.

The repeated footage gave the impression of an escalating crisis, but Queensland police data showed that youth offending had been trending downward over the previous decade. The number of serious youth offenders was actually a tiny fraction of overall crime statistics. By looping the same shocking footage daily, Sky News created a perception of rampant, escalating danger that the broader data didn't support, and used it to campaign for tougher youth sentencing laws.

Sky News hosts routinely cited rising crime statistics in Victoria to attack the state government, pointing to massive percentage increases to claim the state was unsafe.

They left out why those numbers rose. During the pandemic, "breaches of Chief Health Officer directions" (lockdown violations) were recorded as criminal offenses. When you add thousands of pandemic-related infractions to the statistics, the overall "crime rate" spikes, even though the community wasn't actually experiencing a wave of violence. By just saying "crime is up," Sky News misled viewers into thinking violent crime was soaring, leaving out the context that completely changed the meaning of the data.

When protests and unrest occurred at offshore detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru, Sky News framed them as violent riots by ungrateful detainees who were "biting the hand that feeds them."

The segments routinely omitted the conditions that led to the protests: indefinite detention with no clear timeline for processing, inadequate medical care, documented mental health crises, and suicides among detainees. By stripping the protests of their context, Sky News framed desperate acts by people held in indefinite limbo as evidence of criminality and ingratitude, rather than as a predictable human response to extreme conditions.

Whenever a human rights advocate, lawyer, or politician criticized the conditions of offshore processing (like on Manus Island or Nauru), Sky News hosts would immediately frame the critique as a demand for "open borders."

The vast majority of advocates criticizing offshore detention don't advocate for abolishing border security. They typically argue for adhering to international law, implementing faster processing timelines, or shifting to community detention. By framing the debate as a choice between "tough border security" and "reckless open borders," Sky News created a false dichotomy, making it easy to paint nuanced policy critics as dangerous extremists without actually engaging with their arguments.

During the 2023 Voice referendum debate, Sky News hosts routinely framed the proposal, which was for an advisory body giving Indigenous communities input on policies affecting them, as "enshrining racial division in the Constitution" or "giving one race special privileges."

The Voice had no veto power, no lawmaking power, and no capacity to "divide" anything. It was an advisory mechanism. By reframing a modest structural reform as a radical, race-based power grab, Sky News gave viewers a distorted version of the proposal that was much easier to oppose than the actual one. Viewers were voting against a straw man, not the real policy.

Sky News persistently uses the term "illegal arrivals" or "illegal maritime arrivals" to describe people seeking asylum by boat, while simultaneously running segments questioning their legitimacy.

Under international law (to which Australia is a signatory via the UN Refugee Convention), it is not illegal to seek asylum in a country, regardless of how one arrives. The act of seeking protection is a legal right. By repeatedly branding them as "illegals" before any legal process has occurred, Sky News pre-loads the viewer with a presumption of criminality, making it much easier to support harsh policies without feeling empathy.

When the government spends money on something Sky News disagrees with, it's almost never described as "investment" or "spending." It's "taxpayer money wasted on..." or "your hard-earned dollars funnelled into..." When the same government spends on something Sky News supports, like defence or fossil fuel subsidies, the language shifts to "investment" or "essential funding."

Both are spending. The adjective does all the work. "Wasted" presupposes the spending has no value. "Investment" presupposes it does. The viewer absorbs the conclusion without ever seeing the argument for it.

During the pandemic, Sky News opinion hosts would routinely rattle off a rapid-fire list of grievances in a single monologue: the government is destroying the economy, the masks don't work, the curve was already flattening, the modelling was wrong, the vaccines are rushed, the state premier is a dictator, businesses are collapsing, suicides are skyrocketing, all in under two minutes.

Each of those claims deserved scrutiny. Some had partial merit, some were deeply misleading, and some were flat wrong. But by stacking them rapid-fire, the host ensured the viewer couldn't possibly evaluate any of them. The goal was to create a feeling of overwhelming crisis and incompetence. By the time the segment ended, the viewer felt like everything was falling apart, but couldn't cite a single verified fact to support that feeling.

Sky News segments on energy policy frequently fire off a barrage of claims in rapid succession: renewables are driving up power prices, wind turbines are killing birds, solar panels are made with slave labour in China, the grid can't handle the load, South Australia had a statewide blackout because of wind farms, Europe is abandoning renewables, and coal is the only reliable baseload power, all in a single segment.

Some of these claims have a grain of truth; most are either false or deeply misleading. But stacked together in 90 seconds, the viewer can't possibly evaluate any of them. The intent is to create an overwhelming impression that renewable energy is a failed, dangerous experiment. By the time the segment ends, the viewer feels informed, but they've been flooded with assertions they never had a chance to question.

Sky News's Outsiders program ran for years with a format designed around the panel stack: three conservative voices (hosts Rowan Dean, Rita Panahi, and James Morrow) discussing the news with no progressive or even moderate counterpoint at all. On the evening panel shows like The Bolt Report or Credlin, the format often featured a conservative host plus two conservative guests, with a single progressive guest brought in to be the punching bag for the segment.

The progressive guest is there for one reason: to let the network claim balance. They're routinely interrupted, spoken over, or asked hostile questions framed as "some people would say you're doing X, how do you respond?" The conservative guests get sympathetic questions and uninterrupted time. The visual dynamic (three against one) sends a subconscious message: the conservative position is the mainstream, and the progressive position is the fringe.

When Sky News covers climate policy, the format often features a conservative host, a conservative politician or commentator, and a "climate sceptic" guest presented as a "realist" or "independent thinker." Occasionally, an actual climate scientist is included, but they're positioned as the outlier defending a "consensus" that the other three treat with suspicion or mockery.

The scientist is there to provide the appearance of balance, but the deck is stacked against them from the start. They're asked to defend the entirety of climate science against three people who are pre-committed to disagreeing, often on topics outside their expertise. The visual dynamic (three confident voices vs. one defensive one) signals to the viewer that the sceptic position is the brave, common-sense one, and the scientific consensus is the fringe view.