Gloves Off in Oz as Roy Morgan Claims Fake News

Research agency Roy Morgan has taken the unusual step of calling out a newspaper, The Australian, for its 'fake news' reporting of its own circulation figures.

In an email alert and on its web site, Roy Morgan says The Australian is claiming 1,803,000 print readers of its Monday to Friday newspaper, while the Roy Morgan average issue readership of the paper is 291,000 (down 12,000 in a year), with the equivalent figure for The Weekend Australian at 547,000, down 38,000 in a year.

The paper also reported an 80% year-on-year increase of 800,000 online readers to 1,892,000, while Roy Morgan say its figure is down 91,000 to 1,812,000.

The agency points out that News Corporation does not subscribe to its data, and states 'It is important that all audience information used by media in Australia to sell marketers advertising space is accurate... A correction in tomorrow's The Australian is not enough'.

The piece gives an explanation of how Roy Morgan's own audience estimates are calculated, and suggests that those of rival system emma 'use a broad and misleading 4 week net figure which inflates audience numbers by lengthening the period of measurement substantially'. emma (Enhanced Media Metrics Australia) was launched in 2013 as a cross-platform audience insights and readership survey funded by the Australian newspaper industry.

The item can be found online at www.roymorgan.com/findings/8209-roy-morgan-emma-readership-september-2019-201911250501 .