Every other cultural form has robust criticism. Film has critics who analyse technique, narrative, and social impact. Music has reviewers who evaluate artistic merit and cultural significance. Literature has critics who engage deeply with texts and contexts.

Media—the institution that shapes how we understand everything else—barely has any critical infrastructure at all.

Sure, there are media critics. A handful of journalists cover the media industry. Some academics study journalism. But compared to the massive influence media has on public understanding, the amount of serious, sustained criticism is minuscule.

And that’s a problem, because media needs criticism now more than ever.

Think about what media does. It determines which issues get public attention. It frames how we understand complex events. It decides who gets heard and who gets ignored. It shapes our understanding of reality itself. That’s enormous power, and power without accountability tends to get misused.

Media criticism is supposed to provide that accountability. Not in a legal or regulatory sense, but in a cultural one. Critics analyse how coverage works, point out biases and blind spots, hold outlets accountable for their choices. They make the construction of news visible, helping audiences understand that what they’re reading is the product of choices, not just reality transmitted directly to their screens.

Australian media particularly needs this. Our media landscape is highly concentrated, politically influential, and frequently compromised by commercial and political interests. Yet serious media criticism is rare. Most coverage of media is either industry gossip or culture war battles about bias.

What we need is more fundamental criticism of how media actually works. How do news values shape what gets covered? How do business models influence editorial decisions? How do platforms change what stories succeed? How do journalists’ social positions affect what they see as important?

These aren’t abstract academic questions—they directly affect what information Australians receive and how they understand their world. But they’re rarely discussed in public forums.

Part of the problem is that media doesn’t like being criticised. Journalists can dish it out but often can’t take it. Criticism of media coverage gets dismissed as bias complaints or attacks on press freedom. The idea that journalism itself should be subject to rigorous critique makes many journalists defensive.

But every other profession accepts external criticism. Doctors don’t dismiss all criticism of medicine as attacks on healthcare. Scientists don’t treat criticism of research methods as assault on science itself. Media’s resistance to criticism is immature and self-defeating.

Another problem is that media criticism requires expertise audiences often lack. Understanding what makes good journalism requires knowing how journalism works—the constraints, incentives, and practices that shape coverage. Without that knowledge, criticism tends to be shallow: “this outlet is biased,” “that story is unfair,” without deeper analysis of why.

This is where professional media critics become valuable. They can explain not just that coverage is problematic, but how and why it became that way. They can trace the structural factors that lead to particular patterns of coverage. They can compare different approaches and evaluate their effectiveness.

Some excellent media criticism exists, to be clear. Margaret Simons in Australia, Jay Rosen in the US, and others do serious analysis of how journalism works and fails. But it’s a tiny cottage industry compared to the massive apparatus of cultural criticism in other domains.

What would robust media criticism look like? It would be regular, visible, and taken seriously by both media organisations and audiences. It would appear in mainstream publications, not just academic journals. It would engage with specific coverage decisions, explaining why they matter and what alternatives exist.

It would also be constructive where possible. The goal isn’t just to tear down journalism—god knows journalists are under enough pressure already. It’s to help journalism improve by identifying what works, what doesn’t, and why.

I think about how enterprise AI work involves constant iteration based on feedback and critique. Systems get built, tested, critiqued, and improved. That cycle of critique and improvement is how you get better outcomes. Media would benefit from similar processes, but it requires accepting criticism as valuable rather than treating it as attack.

The rise of partisan media has made this harder. When criticism of coverage gets immediately sorted into political camps—you’re only saying that because you’re left/right—the substance gets lost. But most media criticism isn’t primarily political. It’s about process, framing, sourcing, transparency, and accountability.

Australian audiences would benefit from more access to serious media criticism. Understanding how news gets made, what choices shape coverage, what constraints journalists face—this helps people be more sophisticated media consumers. It doesn’t have to undermine trust in journalism; often it increases trust by making the process transparent.

We need media literacy education, absolutely. But we also need ongoing, professional media criticism that does for journalism what film criticism does for movies—makes the craft visible, evaluates excellence, points out failures, and helps audiences understand what they’re consuming.

The media won’t like it. They’ll complain that criticism is unfair, biased, or attacking their integrity. Some of them will refuse to engage. That’s fine. Culture critics don’t need filmmakers’ permission to review films. Media critics don’t need journalists’ permission to critique journalism.

What they do need is platforms, audiences, and recognition that the work matters. Right now, media criticism exists mostly in marginal spaces—academic journals, specialist publications, occasional columns. It should be central to how we think about public discourse.

Because media isn’t just another industry or cultural form. It’s the infrastructure of public knowledge. How it works determines what we know and what we don’t. That deserves the most serious, sustained, rigorous criticism we can muster.

We have film critics because movies matter to culture. We have literary critics because books matter to thought. We need media critics because journalism matters to democracy.

It’s that simple, and that important.