The power and influence of Australian media is the topic of a public lecture by a visiting political scientist at The University of Western Australia next week.

Sally Young, Associate Professor and Reader in the School of Social and Political Sciences at The University of Melbourne, will investigate the media's failure to recognise that it is just as influential as the hundreds of politicians sitting in parliaments around Australia.

Professor Young's latest book, How Australia Decides:  Election Reporting and the Media was the result of a five-year study, funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant, of how federal election campaigns are reported in the Australian media.

While we know quite a lot about politicians and how they govern, we know worryingly little about the media and how they operate, Professor Young said.

In her lecture she will argue that this is an urgent problem and that the media do a poor job of scrutinising and reporting on their own role.

"How is it that news journalism in Australia is said to currently be ‘in crisis' - with declining revenues/ratings, job losses and a broken business model - yet, as a collective, the Australian media remain so powerful?" Professor Young asks.

WHAT:           Public lecture, More Powerful than Politicians?  The Media in Australia Today.

WHERE:        Social Sciences Lecture Theatre, The University of Western Australia.  Parking P3, off Hackett Drive.

WHEN:           Thursday 16 August at 6pm.

RSVP:             Institute of Advanced Studies.

Media references

Audrey Barton (UWA Institute of Advanced Studies)  (+61 8)  6488 4797
Michael Sinclair-Jones (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 3229  /  (+61 4) 00 700 783