The trust gap isn’t the media. It’s visibility.

The recent Shaping Perceptions: How Australian Media Reports on Ageing report from the Australian Human Rights Commission confirms what many aged care leaders have long held; that the media plays a significant role in shaping public perceptions of ageing and, by extension, the aged care sector.

The report found that older Australians are often portrayed through a lens of decline, dependency and crisis. They are often spoken about rather than heard, dehumanised by being represented as anonymous hands or walking frames rather than as people with identities, relationships and lives beyond the services they receive.

It’s tempting to say that the aged care sector has a media problem, but that’s really only half the story.

Trust is built through more than media

New research commissioned by Ageing Australia found that Australians who have direct experience with aged care have significantly higher levels of trust in the sector than those who don’t. This finding deserves more attention in boardrooms because it suggests trust is shaped in more than one way. It’s not only shaped by what people read in the media, it’s shaped by what they experience themselves. Media matters, but so does experience. This distinction matters because experience is something leaders can influence.

For leaders, this changes the conversation on media strategy.

Instead of working to generate more positive media coverage, we could be actively creating more opportunities for Australians to experience ageing and aged care before they need it.

Visibility creates familiarity

In many ways, we’ve gradually removed ageing from everyday life; perhaps under the banner of privacy and dignity. Fewer families live across multiple generations and residential aged care often exists on the fringes of community life. For many Australians, their understanding of aged care comes not from lived experience, but from the occasional headline when something has gone wrong.

When visibility of a subject is low, every public story carries greater weight. Public relations won’t solve this, visibility might.

Credibility deserves to be seen

The foundations of organisational resilience begin with delivering exceptional care; that will never change. No amount of strategic storytelling can substitute for quality services, happy staff and cultures that place dignity, safety and choice at the centre of decision-making. Credibility is earned long before it is spruiked in a media release.

But this credibility also needs to be seen. Visibility without credibility is marketing. Credibility without visibility is a missed opportunity.

Leadership can close the information gap

That doesn’t mean carefully curated marketing campaigns. It means inviting the community in; and many in the sector are already doing this. Building intergenerational partnerships. Supporting residents to participate in local events. Encouraging clinicians and executives to become recognised voices in public conversations. Sharing authentic images and real stories that reflect the richness, humour and individuality of later life, rather than reducing older Australians to cultural waifs.

The Human Rights Commission report offers practical recommendations that leaders can adopt individually, while also encouraging collective action across the sector. Media-ready subject matter experts, accessible research, authentic photography and lived experience stories make it easier for journalists to tell more complete stories when news breaks. These strategies don’t eliminate scrutiny, nor should they. They strengthen the sector’s reflexes so crisis isn’t the only soundbite available when journalists come looking.

Reducing the vacuum that the media fills is where leaders can have the most impact. Trying to influence editorial decisions, or lamenting the next headline that lacked balance, isn’t a strategy.

Trust grows through experience, whether direct or indirect. Every school partnership, community event, volunteer program, public presentation, research collaboration and resident story helps close the distance between Australians and the reality of ageing. Every credible expert available to comment, every piece of robust evidence shared and every authentic conversation contributes to a more authentic public understanding of the sector.

The media will always report to get clicks but leaders have the opportunity to make the ordinary visible.

In this context, the greatest challenge facing aged care isn’t just improving its reputation.

It’s making ageing part of the story again.