Lynette Sheridan Burns: Who controls the Mainstream Media?

SUMMARY:
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I’m really excited to share this energetic panel lecture from Professor Lynette Sheridan Burns — a brilliant journalist-turned-academic who mixes newsroom smarts with rigorous analysis. Lynette trained at Fairfax, worked at News Limited and edited for Rural Press, and now teaches at Western Sydney University. In this talk she asks a simple but crucial question: who controls the mainstream media in Australia? Using an agenda‑setting frame, she argues the power to shape what people think about remains strong, and platforms like Facebook have amplified that effect through algorithmic curation. Lynette lays out the stark concentration of ownership — News Corp, Fairfax/Nine, Seven, Nine, regional groups and digital players commanding the lion’s share of revenue — and challenges us to rethink what “mainstream” even means in the digital age. This talk is essential viewing for journalists, students, activists and anyone who cares about media pluralism, algorithms and democratic information. Clear, grounded, slightly provocative and full of lived experience — a must-watch for Australians interested in the media landscape.

RUMBLE DESCRIPTION:
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Watch Professor Lynette Sheridan Burns unpack who really controls the mainstream media in Australia. Lynette brings a rare combination of lived newsroom experience (trained at Fairfax, worked at News Limited, edited for Rural Press) and academic rigour as a journalism professor and Deputy Dean at Western Sydney University. This talk was part of a panel discussion and moves quickly from historical context to pressing contemporary concerns.

Key points covered:
The agenda‑setting power of traditional media: it’s less about telling people what to think and more about telling them what to think about.
How algorithmic platforms like Facebook have reshaped that agenda‑setting role, slicing and delivering information in novel ways.
The concentration of media ownership in Australia: major players such as News Corp, Fairfax (now allied with Nine), Seven, regional groups and others control the majority of news revenue and reach.
Why the question of “who owns the media” intersects with democracy, plurality and who gets heard.

Lynette also references statistics and historical points (media revenue concentration in 2015–16, comparative international examples) to show Australia’s particularly concentrated landscape. If you’re a journalism student, media commentator, policy wonk, or simply curious about how news and social platforms shape public conversation, this is a smart, grounded and occasionally provocative primer.

If you found this useful, please like, share and subscribe for more talks and panels about media, journalism and democracy. Leave a comment with your thoughts — who do you think holds the agenda in 2025?

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