A Reuters report about one of the “news businesses” registered for payment under Australia’s mandatory bargaining code has raised questions about how applicants are vetted.

News aggregation site News Cop – no connection with the Murdoch-owned News Corp – is one of 28 eligible news businesses registered with the Australian Communications and Media Authority under the code.

But a report by Reuters’ Byron Kaye says the “almost unknown” site is owned by a company registered only days before the code legislation was passed, with “no physical address other than a post office box”, and says it used journalist profiles considered to have been faked.

To register, ACMA says news business corporations – or their “related body corporate” – need to have accounts showing revenue of more than $150,000 in their “most recent year” or three of the five most recent years for which there are accounts, but says the revenue does not need to have been generated by the news business. Records show News Cop was registered on February 21, 2021.

Kaye quoted a QUT “misinformation researcher” that pictures accompanying the names of credited reporters on the site had probably been computer-generated, but said these had since been replaced with the name of Adam Cox and a picture of a monkey.

Reuters quoted UNSW economics professor Richard Holden that Newscop’s inclusion on the ACMA-monitored register “undermined the law's intent to support public interest journalism and ‘shows you that these rules are easily gamed’.”

An article on News Cop includes itself among examples of businesses currently are registered, along with the Daily Mail, ABC, SBS and The Conversation. It points out that that News Corp (the Murdoch-owned entity), Seven West Media and Nine Entertainment are not listed.

News Cop says it asked Reuters’ Kaye “why they were not yet an eligible news media corporation with the ACMA”, to be told that he was “asking the questions here”. The writer questions why news organisations such as News Corp and Seven West Media – both of which have struck deals with the tech giants – are also not registered.

Kaye said an ACMA spokesperson told him that “since authorising News Cop, the agency had gone back to the company and asked ‘about the registered news business and its production of news source content’,” but had declined to provide details.