Labor urged to include news outlets in social media crackdown to curb ‘dangerous’ misinformation

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young says misinformation is a growing threat to democracy, ‘whether it’s spread via large social media platforms or by large multinational media corporations’. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

The Albanese government has been urged to remove the “professional news content” exemption from its crackdown on misinformation on social media, amid concerns that news coverage of the voice and Covid has spread false information and lies.

The Greens, independent MPs Zali Steggall and Zoe Daniel and the media law academic Michael Douglas have all questioned the blanket exemption in Labor’s disinformation crackdown.