Full disclosure - I was compelled to try a vegan diet after watching the Gamechangers documentary on Netflix.  I only lasted a week, no harm done, but it did get me thinking – where are the content police?

Gamechangers seems to have been produced with the explicit purpose of convincing us to become vegan and eat only a plant-based diet. James Cameron (Terminator/Titanic), one of the producers, has ‘apparently’ heavily invested in a pea protein business which does seem to be quite a conflict of interest.

I have no specific views or expertise to comment on a vegan diet or any diet for that matter but how does the average consumer navigate content like this; and at what point should a person or company have to disclose their commercial bias and how they could benefit from the message they are evangelising?

While fake news is often hotly debated and fingers are pointed in many directions  -  who is the gatekeeper for broader content at time when we produce and consume more content than ever before.

Policing content seemed pretty straight forward when Australians consumed mostly Australian content.

Alan Jones and John Laws were fined and publicly hauled over the coals in the cash for comments scandal of 1999.  Regulations were changed and ACMA and ABA were bought into question for governance.

With the global nature of content production, distribution and consumption, local authorities are in the most part of little relevance or help in policing disclosure of vested and commercial interests. 

So what is to stop large international companies using Gamechangers-style content to broadly misinform for their own financial gain and radically influence consumer behaviour which could be very detrimental to people’s health and could affect entire industries?