Publisher Man of Many has welcomed several improvements to the federal government's News Bargaining Incentive legislation, but has warned the amendments will fail to reach most of the independent publishing sector.
Scott Purcell, co-founder of Man of Many, acknowledged the government had closed a loophole that allowed platforms to remove news and walk away, bringing professional networking services such as LinkedIn into scope.
Canberra had also broadened the definition of journalist to include freelancers, increased offsets for deals with small and medium publishers, and created a grants program for outlets with revenue under $150,000.
"Anyone claiming the government has not listened is not reading the same document," said Purcell.
"Most of what the independent sector asked for in May is in here, and the support for regional and diverse-community journalism goes beyond what we asked for. We should say so plainly."
But Purcell cautioned that almost every improvement operated downstream of a registration gate that excluded most of the industry, and pointed to a discrepancy in the government's own data to make the case.
ACMA's register of eligible news businesses lists fewer than 100 news business corporations.
However, ACMA's own Media Diversity Measurement Framework, in its 2025 baseline report, identified 2,864 professional news outlets across Australia.
"The same regulator measures the industry at 2,864 and would fund it at under 100," said Purcell.
The legislation gives platforms two routes to discharge their liability, negotiating commercial deals directly with publishers, or paying the levy to the Commonwealth for distribution through the Statutory Payment Scheme.
Purcell said the numbers favoured Route A, with platforms able to extinguish a $100 million charge by spending roughly $50 million on deals with small and medium publishers.
Despite this, Purcell said platforms would choose Route B regardless, because paying a levy in one market was preferable to setting a global precedent.
"Route B is the live one. The distribution formula is the whole policy," said Purcell.
The legislation also applies two different content standards to the same journalism.
To earn an offset, a platform's expenditure must cover "covered news content,” a broad definition that includes ‘content reporting’ or explaining ‘issues of interest to Australians’.
But to qualify for distribution, a publisher must meet the narrow "core news content" test.
"The bill will pay a platform two dollars of offset for every dollar it spends licensing content the same bill says is not news," said Purcell.
"Either this work has value, or it does not. Pick one."
Man of Many was registered under the original code before being deregistered by ACMA in January, on the basis that its content, consumer products, automotive, sport and lifestyle, did not meet the core news content test.
The editorial position had not changed between registration and revocation.
Broadsheet Media and Urban List were also allegedly deregistered on the same day, for the same reasons.
"Nothing we published changed. The regulator's reading of an undefined word changed," said Purcell.
"If eligibility can move underneath a publisher without the publisher doing anything, it is not a standard. It is a judgment call, and a business cannot plan around it."
The AI exemption, which excludes services that primarily use large language models, also remained unaddressed, with Purcell saying the narrowing of the charge base from total Australian revenue to digital advertising revenue had, in effect, widened it, since AI assistants largely did not carry digital advertising.
"Publishers are seeing referral traffic fall by twenty to sixty per cent because of AI summarisation,” he said.
“That is the mechanism dismantling the model right now.
"The test should be the conduct, not the corporate structure."
Purcell also pointed to the compliance burden the registration process imposed on the publishers the scheme was designed to help, noting Man of Many spent roughly 18 months on the registration process and received neither a deal, nor a dollar, under the original code.
History, he said, provided a warning.
Under the original code, an estimated $200 to $250 million a year flowed to publishers, with roughly 60% to 70% going to News Corp Australia, Nine Entertainment and Seven West Media.
In the same period, about 450 journalists were made redundant across those three organisations, and no obligation existed requiring recipients to disclose how the money was spent.
"We are not arguing about whether platforms should pay. That argument is over, and the government won it," emphasised Purcell.
"We are arguing about whether the money funds journalism or funds balance sheets, and there are five years of evidence on that question."
Man of Many is calling for four amendments before the bill is introduced; adopt ACMA's Media Diversity Measurement Framework definitions as the eligibility basis, align the two content standards, make the search service definition technology-neutral by removing the exclusion of large language models in clause 9(c), and mandate the use of funds reporting, verified by payroll evidence on the JobKeeper model, so every dollar can be traced to a working journalist's salary.
"The bill has not been introduced. None of these weakens the scheme," said Purcell.
"They make it reach the industry it is meant to protect."
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