6 News, founded in 2019 by Leonardo Puglisi as a then-11 year old, is a streaming news channel, run primarily by teenagers and delivering news “on the hour, every hour” alongside “breaking news, rolling coverage, and live press conferences”. Puglisi sat with Honi to discuss all things media and misinformation.
HONI SOIT: For a lot of our readers who perhaps aren’t familiar with what 6 News is, what do you guys do? What is the aim of your organisation?
LEONARDO PUGLISI: Our aim has always just been to deliver impartial news coverage, that’s been the aim the entire time. And it’s never been ‘news by kids for kids’. We’re not BTN or anything, we’ve never tried specifically to solely appeal to them. So it’s just been about providing an alternative. The aim isn’t necessarily to take down mainstream media or anything like that. Maybe I’m too ambitious but I do think, at this point, people are turning to us away from MSM, right?
Leo has been careful to maintain the integrity of 6 News through an emphasis on transparency and combating misinformation; the website sports a “Fact-Check” section, with a page explaining 6 News’ 7 different fact-checking ratings (ranging from “Satire/Humour” and “Unproven”, to “True”) and the process itself.
HS: A lot of traditional media outlets aspire to be nonpartisan. But nevertheless, they get called out for biassed language. I think a particularly relevant example is the issue of Palestine and the way that the passive voice is used in headlines. We’ve seen a lot of headlines from The Guardian, from the ABC, that have been called out for the use of the passive voice. So they’ll say, like, you know “Gazans found dead” and then reading on, the lede is buried and they’ve been killed by an Israeli rocket attack or something. We’ve noticed that 6 News often doesn’t do that, or is at least able to present it in more of a straightforward, blunt way. Was that, in something that you guys actively considered with this issue in particular, or is it something you aspire to do regardless?
LP: Look, it’s never been like a proper set policy in terms of when you talk about things like active, passive voice. I think we’ve always tried to be blunt in headlines. Part of that is also because of the Twitter character limit. IDF has a lot less characters than found dead, if you want one example. I’m sure we’ve had times where maybe we’ve used passive voice, or maybe we have left out a fact, but never has that been like an intention. We’ve always tried to get that information out. We’ve just tried to be as blunt as possible, just as accurate as possible, because I think that’s what people want to see. They don’t need or want to see necessarily sanitised headlines about this kind of thing;looking at some of the horrific images that we’ve had since October 7 especially. People are wanting to get that content as factual and accurate as possible, and we’re trying to bring that. And I think that that’s always important. Israel and Palestine aside, that’s always important. Especially given that a lot of people have, and I think understandably, distrust in other media over their particular coverage going back years…we’ve really just been able to present it how it is, and I think that’s what people have appreciated about our coverage. We’ll always strive to be the best we can on this especially. And I think that’s just important, and it’s a service to our viewers.
Leo has cultivated a journalistic record he is clearly deeply proud of. 6 News has real and often exclusive substance: “We’ve got all these interviews with Prime Ministers. I’ve got countless examples of mainstream media quoting us and using us as their primary source. When Victoria went into stage four lockdown, two days before it actually went into effect, we said it was happening and we said that industries were preparing for that shutdown! We were called out. We were told ‘who’s this? Just some kid with a YouTube channel’. 24 hours later, we are proven right.”
HS: The exclusive interview that you did with Senator Payman; you were the first news channel to interview her at all! I thought that was really special, not just because you’re the first to do it, but because it was such a divisive issue within the Labor Party and mainstream media. Why do you think she decided to accept an interview from your non-mainstream media outlet?
LP: I’m imagining she had at least known about us beforehand, maybe she’s seen our record. But look, we’ve been reporting on this for some time, right even before the actual motion. We’ve been reporting on her dissenting. We’ve been reporting, a couple of days before she did cross the floor, that we had sources indicating she likely would —and obviously that turned out to be accurate. I think it just speaks to our record, and the fact that a lot of the interview was really just asking her to explain things and say what she had to say. We just do it. There was never a time limit set by either her or me. I appreciate her coming on. I’m really proud that we were able to do that. Was probably one of our biggest grabs of the year.
HS: You also do local election coverage; these are often downplayed quite a bit in terms of the effect that they can have on the local community, or in terms of the wider effect they have on a party and a state. What made you decide to focus on that type of election coverage?
LP: I’ve always found it personally interesting; I’m a bit of an elections nerd myself. But they are underreported, they’re undercovered. We want to be able to bring a national spotlight on them. If the 6 News CEO finds it interesting, he can just start a section if he wants! And you know, the website’s coming along, and really it’s going to be a resource for everyone to understand that we’re trying to put a local thing on a national scale, which means we do have to kind of hyper explain certain results or seats. It’s an entire segment that really, outside of election season, no other national news channel does.
A segment that other news organisations do and 6 News’ notably doesn’t, is political opinion coverage. 6 News’ does not have a resident columnist, nor do they consider expanding into that market, citing that “people are looking for somewhere that doesn’t”. Leo reiterates: “We want to be presenting straight facts, which is why it’s that 10 minute news: short, sharp, factual. A lack of impartiality is something many news outlets in this country and around the world get criticised for these days”.
In terms of political coverage, 6 News has expanded into international politics, covering the upcoming general election in the United States; Leo reports having broken the news of Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the election live at 5:30am.
When grilled on the polarising nature of US politics and the impact of this on reporting accurately, Leo concedes that it is indeed “so polarised there…when you have literally two parties that are viable, which is a ridiculous system in itself”. He reiterates that the key to reporting lies in contextualising and hyper-explaining US politics: “you know, at some levels, we have to dumb it down. That isn’t the right term, but I’m always conscious that it’s about little things like that, like who the hell are we talking about when it comes to this issue or some position that doesn’t exist in Australia. We have to add in these descriptions.”
HS: If you look at the Overton window of the US versus Australia, a lot of their right wing policies are shifted significantly more to the right than they ever would be in Australia. We’ve never had a national abortion ban to the same extent that Roe v. Wade has been overturned. How do you deal with those kinds of policies and reporting on them, when they’re often very tense, moralistic, controversial issues?
LP: A lot of it has to be these explanations of what exactly is going on, how the rules are different there. But, you know, we’ll take the local angle. Sometimes we’ll be like, you know, in Australia, things are different and we have to compare. It’s going back to those kinds of simple explanations, and speaking to people who actually know what they’re talking about.
HS: Given the political climate of increasing polarisation, do you think that there’ll be things that really test you, or there’ll be incidents in the future?
LP: Things will always test us. Election seasons always tend to test us with fact checking, especially if we’re fact-checking candidates to their faces; or, in my case, the Prime Minister, fact-checking him to his face. Wasn’t that funny! He loved that, I’m sure. Look, that’ll always be a test. The Voice campaign as well. That was some of the worst misinformation I think I’ve ever seen. Forget the Voice proposal itself, but just on the referendum process. Since the 2020 US election, as you can imagine, a lot of the false, flawed claims have kind of flooded in here, and they’ve become a bit more normalised on social media. And depending on how this 2024 US election goes, and the proximity to the 2025 federal election, I fear there’ll be some terrible misinformation crossover there. But really, I’ll keep calling it out, because again, there is no evidence of fraud in Australian elections, and that has to be reinstated, and I want to make sure people trust our electoral system.
HS: Another element of trust is that you guys aren’t beholden to any corporate interests, which is obviously a really big part of mainstream media. Do you see this continuing on in the future? Do you feel that scaling to be larger requires that kind of corporate infrastructure?
LP: I’m not particularly worried about corporate interests, because I want to maintain this kind of independence we have, just from a personal standpoint, right? I don’t like being controlled. I like to have the control here! And 95% of what we get is from our viewers. It’s just from regular people on Patreon. We want to be independent. We want to set that out. And that’s what I think has really stood us apart, especially in the last few years, when you’ve had these kinds of media takeovers; there was the Nine and the Fairfax merger a few years ago. And it’s rare that you do find a news publication that doesn’t have a big parent company. 6 News’ parent company is 6 News at the end of the day, and it will always stay that way —as long as I’m here, 6 News will be here.
HS: Brilliant! Is there anything that you would like to add at the end, or anything you haven’t been able to talk about yet?
LP: Not really. I just wanna say that, you know, we’re going to continue to grow. As I said before, we’re not going to get everything right, but I think I just really have to thank everyone who’s been supporting us. No other country, I don’t think, has a 24/7 news channel that is staffed by mainly high school students. And I’m incredibly proud that we exist as that; even if we’re a small player, we’re there and we’re not going anywhere.
