This article explores links between the Australian press and the marketization of aged care in Australia. By using critical discourse analysis as a research tool, and a data set of 61 news articles from eight mainstream Australian newspapers published in April 2012 and August 2013, this article argues that dominant discourses around ageing in the sampled newspapers are in the language of economic rationalism, and aged care is constructed as a commodity. Elderly people are constructed mainly as consumers of aged care, reflecting and reinforcing official narratives towards the marketization of care. The study from which this article is drawn found that most Australian journalists not only relayed official messages about the commodification of aged care without critical engagement, but also included few opposing opinions.

This article builds on a research project examining news values, journalistic practices, and media power in Australia and Malaysia. These two countries differ from each other in socio-cultural, religious, regional, political perspectives, and journalistic practices but share the presence of indigenous people, appreciation for multiculturalism, and increasing numbers of older people. The comparison of journalistic practices – Asian-based development journalism and Western journalism practices – along with other differences, especially socio-cultural values, provides the rationale for the selection of these two countries. The study draws on Fairclough’s three-dimensional critical discourse analysis and Caple and Bednarek’s discursive news values analysis to explore the discursive practices of journalists in providing voices and prioritising different actors in news stories. 99 news articles from 8 mainstream Australian newspapers – The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Advertiser, The Daily Telegraph, The Courier-Mail, The Herald Sun, and The Canberra Times – and 5 English-language Malaysian newspapers – New Straits Times, The Malay Mail, The Star, The Borneo Post, and The Sun – published between January 2011 and December 2013 are selected as the dataset in this study. The study finds that reference to elite persons remains a uniform news value in both Australian and Malaysian newspapers, indicating the role of journalists in reflecting and reinforcing the status quo, and the imbalance of power in society. This dominant news value amongst journalists tends to silence those who are not conceived as newsworthy or seen as less newsworthy, such as older people. While the dominance of elites can be linked to social norms in Malaysia that prevent challenges to the social hierarchy and the maintenance of a high regard for people in authority such as political leaders, the discursive practices of Australian journalists do not align with their role to provide a uniform forum for the exchange of ideas, as elderly Australians are given limited opportunities to be active participants.

This paper explores the role of Malaysian media in the revitalisation of familism, which seems to descend in most Asian societies. The examination of news articles published in English-language Malaysian newspapers between 2011–2021 through critical discourse analysis reveals that newspapers in Malaysia are playing a moral guardianship role by warning readers of the slipping of filial responsibility and the dangers of the alternatives. The papers construct a discourse in support of an established social norm of traditional family roles in caring for family members – particularly, elderly people who are on the rise throughout the world – something the government supports as well, as it relieves it of any obligation to elderly citizens. The role of journalists in the rekindling of familial piety can be linked to development journalism that emphasises the media's partnership with the government as care of older family members absolves the government from the cost of care associated with an increasingly ageing population.

No abstract