Here’s a game you can play: open any business news site and try to identify which stories originated from press releases versus actual journalism. If you’re honest about it, you’ll find it’s harder than it should be.

That’s because corporate spin has become so embedded in Australian media that it’s essentially its own genre. Not advertising, exactly. Not journalism, certainly. Something in between—a hybrid form where corporate messaging is delivered through editorial formats, giving it the appearance of news while serving marketing objectives.

And we’ve all become so used to it that we barely notice anymore.

The mechanics are straightforward. A company issues a press release announcing something—a new product, a strategic partnership, quarterly results. That release is written by PR professionals to present the company in the best possible light, emphasising positives and downplaying negatives.

Traditional journalism would take that release as a starting point for reporting. Interview other stakeholders. Seek context. Provide analysis. The final story might use information from the release, but it would be filtered through editorial judgment.

What happens instead, increasingly, is that the release gets published essentially unchanged. Maybe some paragraphs get rearranged. Maybe a token quote from an analyst gets added. But the core narrative, framing, and often even the language comes directly from the corporation’s PR department.

This isn’t an accident or journalistic laziness—it’s a business model. Media organisations have cut reporting staff while maintaining publication quotas. Corporate press releases provide free content to fill space. Publishing them requires minimal effort and keeps advertisers happy. Everyone wins, except readers who think they’re getting news.

The rise of “branded content” and “native advertising” has made this even worse. These are explicitly paid placements, but they’re formatted to look like editorial content. The disclosure is there, technically, but it’s often so subtle that readers miss it. You’re reading what looks like a news article, but it’s actually an ad.

Australian business media is particularly bad about this. Pick up any business publication and you’ll find stories that are thinly veiled advertisements for companies, technologies, or services. The framing is always positive. Critical voices are absent or marginalised. Potential downsides are unmentioned.

Tech coverage is especially compromised. Stories about new technologies, digital platforms, or corporate innovations are often just regurgitated press releases from the companies involved. There’s rarely any critical analysis of whether the technology actually works, who benefits, what the trade-offs are, or whether the claims being made are supported by evidence.

I notice this constantly in coverage of AI and automation. Every announcement of a company “embracing AI” gets breathless coverage about innovation and transformation. The actual substance—what they’re doing, whether it works, what the implications are—is rarely examined. It’s just corporate messaging delivered through news formats.

This creates a distorted picture of business reality. Readers see endless stories about successful launches, transformative innovations, and strategic partnerships. They don’t see the failures, the overhyped technologies that underdeliver, the partnerships that fall apart, the products that nobody wants.

It’s not that those stories don’t exist—some journalists do excellent critical business reporting. But they’re vastly outnumbered by the corporate spin pieces, creating an overall picture that’s unrealistically positive.

What’s particularly insidious is how this affects public understanding of important issues. When coverage of climate change is dominated by oil companies talking about their sustainability initiatives, readers get a misleading picture of corporate action. When tech companies’ claims about AI go unchallenged, people develop unrealistic expectations. When property developers’ promotional material gets published as news, housing debates become distorted.

The solution isn’t complicated: properly fund business journalism so outlets don’t need to rely on press releases as content. Maintain clear distinctions between editorial and commercial content. Hold companies accountable by actually investigating their claims rather than just publishing them.

But the incentives all point the wrong way. Publishing corporate spin is cheap and makes advertisers happy. Real reporting is expensive and might upset commercial partners. In a struggling media industry, the choice seems obvious.

What’s frustrating is that readers would probably prefer actual journalism. When real investigations into corporate behaviour get published, they generate huge engagement. People want to understand what’s actually happening, not just read repackaged PR.

But we’ve reached a point where corporate messaging is so normalised that calling it out feels almost pointless. Of course the story about the company’s new initiative is essentially their press release. Of course the technology coverage is uncritical. Of course the branded content looks like editorial. That’s just how media works now.

Except it doesn’t have to be. Some publications maintain standards. Some journalists refuse to just republish press releases. Some business models don’t depend on corporate advertising.

The question is whether Australian media will prioritise those approaches, or whether we’ll keep sliding toward a future where “news” is just whatever corporations want you to believe.

Right now, I know which way we’re trending. And it’s not toward more independent, critical journalism.

The corporate spin genre is here to stay. We can at least be honest about what it is.

Maybe then we’ll stop pretending it’s journalism.