This is a report of results of a survey commissioned by the Public Interest Journalism Initiative from Essential Media.

Essential Media conduct a fortnightly omnibus survey, in which six questions relating to public interest journalism were included. This survey was conducted from 2-5 April, 2020, and had 1,068 respondents (95% certainty for random sampling).

Key findings:

• Australians are huge users of media (86%)
• The vast majority of respondents (81%) say public interest journalism is important in media, and this rises to 86% for such journalism during natural disasters and 85% during public health crises.
• This large majority of respondents is broadly satisfied at the amount of coverage across international, national, state/territory and local government affairs BUT some are nevertheless concerned that there may particularly be undersupply in the local government sphere.
• A majority (53%) will actually support a tax increase to provide an increase in public interest journalism.