Decreasing independent business journalism is increasing room for PR agencies and advisors to set up their own news websites to push their own clients.

In August, Stockhead launched with some top business journalists, and scoring a puff piece on industry news website Mumbrella. “Stockhead.com.au will be led by CEO and editor-in-chief [David] Higgins, and will feature stories about companies listed on the ASX across technology, healthcare and resources,” the story said.

What it didn’t mention is the close ties it has to PR agency Media and Capital Partners — the website has shareholders, owners and directors in common, and it has two journalists on staff whose previous job was with M+C Partners. M+C Partners describes itself on its website as a “boutique advisory firm”, offering media and investor relations and capital raising advisory services. Stockhead is dedicated to news about ASX-listed companies, and most stories on its website are about companies outside the top 200 listed companies, which often don’t make the news in the increasingly small and limited business pages of the major newspapers.

The links have been detailed twice by the Australian Financial Review’s Rear Window column, but Higgins is adamant that editorial content is independent, and that any commercial content is properly declared.

Among the news stories on the website about various companies, there are regular stories about M+C Partners clients — MGC Pharma, Peel Mining, Zelda, DigitalX and DroneShield, to name a few. In any of these stories, there is no disclosure.

It’s only when the site runs paid-for advertising features, which it calls “special reports”, there is a disclosure to say the article was “brought to you” by the company.

Higgins told Crikey that the site discloses that it has common investors with M+C Partners, and said editorial content was at his “sole discretion”.

“There is not — and has never been — any arrangement, paid or unpaid, between Stockhead and M&C or its representatives. Editorial content is at my sole discretion. M&C does not influence Stockhead editorial content in any way,” he said.

Stockhead isn’t the only Australian finance news website linked to a PR agency. Espresso runs InnovationAus (which is disclosed in the “about” section of its website), and StocksDigital is a financial services content business that also promises its clients “journalistic news articles that cover key company messages” on its news page.

Monash University associate professor Johan Lidberg told Crikey that there was a “notorious” revolving door between financial journalism and the commercial sector, and a recurring issue of proper disclosures in reporting on business.

“The large number of editorial lay-offs during the last few years in legacy media news rooms has taken its toll on independent business and finance journalism,” he said.

He said the failure to disclose the paid relationships between news websites and the clients they’re writing about undermines general trust in journalism.

“By definition, you can’t be editorially independent if the content you produce is directly paid for by a client/customer,” he said. “The worst case scenario is that the reader thinks that this is an independent assessment of an investment opportunity, when it is not independent. The reader will act on, potentially, deeply biased information.”

Lidberg said that while these websites were calling themselves “news”, it wasn’t truly “journalism”.

“It simply isn’t,” he said. “By definition journalism is built on a contract of trust between the reporter/editor and the audience. This contract demands that the journalism produced is independent, integrity strong and that any paid-for content/commercial relationships are clearly disclosed. If this is not done, you can’t call it journalism, it’s just different forms of PR and advertising and such malpractice severely undermines real independent journalism at a time where public trust levels in commercial journalism are already low.”