OMG! Australian Media
Reform - The sky is falling in, Freedom of the Press
is being attacked, The Government is trying to ‘Gag’ the media,
“Growing anger at
'Soviet' media reforms”, “Gillard’s Henchman Attacks Our
Freedom” (Great Mao photoshop on that one),
I could carry on, though my personal favourite "Press tsar to check
standards" from The Australian, our supposedly pre-eminent
National paper. Hell, even blind freddy can
see the theme here?
I thought the hyperventilation on Sky News & ABC24 yesterday
afternoon was bad enough, but hello, no, the News Ltd papers
seriously out-did themselves this morning. I
have spent the last few hours toiling away reading all the
opinions on the “Threat to our Democracy” that media reform is,
and so far, to my great shame as an Australian citizen I have
only found one article that actually acknowledged that these
changes are aimed at giving ‘Australians’ the diversity of news
& media that they deserve, “Commando Conroy's roll of the dice”,
of course the main thrust of Ms Murphy’s opinion is still the
‘desperation of the Labor Government’, though I did find this gem
below which tosses the ignorant punter a crumb of respect:
“Making sure Australia's currently woeful level of media diversity doesn't get worse, and journalists conform with their own avowed professional standards are, after all, worthy public policy objectives in this country – uncontentious to anyone outside the industry.”
Yes, that is right, I know if you read the papers you might have
missed this very salient point, BUT, these reforms are actually
supposed to help us, the customer, voter, citizen, basically, the
distracted masses outside of the seats of power, who actually
rely on the media to inform us.
The vast majority of the public still get their information from
the mainstream media , not Social Media as Malcolm Turnbull
maintains. He also maintains that the public
can “discern where truth lies”, I would
suggest that no they cannot. Of course, given
full information from the media, yes they could, though when it
is the media themselves deciding what they will or will not tell
the Australian public, we poor punters have no idea what the
truth is at all or just one media owners version of the truth?
The sad state of the likes of "Meet The Press" is a perfect
example. There are no variety of Press in this popular TV
program, the re-vamped version is now produced by News Ltd, using
News Ltd resources & staff, the title is perilously close to
false advertising, you are not meeting the 'Press', you are
meeting the News Ltd press. Again, the great unwashed
don't know this, they think they are watching a 'News Analysis'
program, unaware of the commercial interest. Anyone
else see an issue with this?
The great unwashed are in general, blissfully unaware of the fact
we really do not have any diversity of media in this
country. Looking at Queensland alone, punters
are amazed when they find out that ONE company owns or has an
interest in The Australian (our major National paper), The
Courier Mail (only state-wide paper), Foxtel (popular in regional
Qld due to poor TV reception), even the NRL does not escape the
News Ltd clutches. How can any one person with
even the smallest does of common-sense think that ONE person
owning that much power to influence the public be a good
thing? There is a reason that the charming Mr John
Birmingham refers to this company as "News Ltd Death Star", the
pop culture reference is extremely apt.
Would we think that having one company supplying about 75% of our
food to the nation as a good thing? Basically
News Ltd rules our media, there is Fairfax of course, though once
you get past those 2 big boys, there is really very little
diversity left at all. The average person on
the street is already cranky about the Coles Woolworths duopoly,
so why the hell do the media think that only having 2 main
players in the print media sector is ok and not being
abused?
Diversity is important and we don’t have enough of
it. Malcolm Turnbull seems to think that if a
paper is doing a bad job, it is an “issue between the paper
and it’s readers”. Trying to make a
complaint as a punter to a major paper is bloody hard
work. I am still waiting for the ABC to get
back to me in regard to a complaint made in
January? If you actually do bother to go to
the “Press Council”, that is even more onerous, though
obviously business & other media organisations seem to love
the Press Council, the punter, MEH! Pretty
irrelevant. Now, in any other sector of
society, there is an Ombudsman or the likes of Fair Trading, that
'Jill Dill' can phone or write to and make a complaint or get
some sort of re-dress. Not the media, they
regulate themselves, again, something the bloke walking around in
the street is not aware of. If every other
industry has some form of Government over-sight that protects
members of the public why the hell should media 
not as
well? A Public Interest Media Advocate should
not be a threat to the media if they are actually doing ‘the
right thing by the Australian Public’?
The hysterical terminology used in all these articles this
morning (and I have only picked out a choice few...) that are
solidly aimed at ‘scaring’ the punter, insinuating that the
‘Government is trying to take control of the News to abuse it’
actually PROVES the need for Media Reform. I
don’t blame the Journalists themselves, they take their lead from
their bosses. Their bosses are not interested
in democracy, they are interested in their share price and
profits, not any high faluting concept of ‘freedom of speech’
they are shouting about now, that is just cynical
BS. BUT, the punter doesn’t know all this,
even a high school student knows that using a ‘scary’ headline
accompanied by a ‘scary’ photo will paint a picture and sets the
tone for ‘story’. This is what we have seen
this morning and judging by comments being read out on ABC
Breakfast this morning, they the predominantly News Ltd media
have sadly been successful in scaring the Australian
public.
From a punters point of view, a read of the newspapers this
morning shows that YES Freedom of the Press is at threat, though
not from the Government, but from the dictatorial Media owners
themselves sadly. Then again, what would I know, I am just
the target market who keeps these media organisations afloat and
who the reporters are supposedly informing?
Cheers
Noely @YaThinkN
PS: If I have not convinced you, check out “Media wrap: papers unite against press
reforms”, to see exactly what sort of
‘diversity’ the Media Regulation Reforms have
prompted? Pretty Scary...
NOTE: Have a gander at "Conroy's media regulation proposals fail
the public interest test", in the Australian (A News Ltd
publication). This opinion piece is not even written by one
of their own Journalists, it has been outsourced to James
Paterson who is editor of the IPA Review at the Institute of
Public Affairs. Grand sounding name isn't that, Institute
of Public Affairs? Impressed? Check out their
website,http://www.ipa.org.au/ look at the book they are
flogging on the front page, read further on what they want.
Now, the insidious nature of this group spreading it's paid for
opinion through-out our media (The Australian, The Drum, The
Project, just to name a few) is way more of a threat to our
democracy then Mr Conroy wanting to reign in the media & make
them a tad more accountable, in my opinion.
