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Australian government urged to promote, and fund, media diversity
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The concentration of media ownership in Australia has assumed a new significance since the phone hacking scandal tainted Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation empire.
There have even been calls that Murdoch should be forced to divest some of his Australian newspaper holdings.
But the influential Australian media analyst Eric Beecher argues that despite News Corp's disproportionate ownership "there is no democratic or economic rationale to support suggestions that News Limited should be forced to divest any of its Australian newspapers."
Instead, he calls for the country's federal and state governments to redress the imbalance in media ownership by "helping people start and run media" and "supporting the growth of media diversity, not suppressing what's already there."
He writes on his Crikey blog:
"It would be entirely logical for governments, concerned about the damage inflicted on democracy by one organisation with so much power, to use a sliver of their considerable resources — society's resources — to create mechanisms to help fund diversity of media ownership."
In practical terms, he suggests that government should provide "seed funding" for new media ventures or provide tax breaks to investors in independent media. He continues:
"Such ideas would induce howls of protest, and indignant editorials, from News Limited newspapers. And of course, such suggestions are tainted with self-interest when they come from anyone involved in independent journalism in a country where such activities are regarded with contempt by the incumbent media establishment."
Gillard: no evidence of hacking in Australia
The Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, insists that there is no evidence of phone hacking within News Limited.
She has also commended the decision by its chairman and chief executive, John Hartigan, to audit the company's record of payments to contributors.
It was a change of tune from late last month when Gillard said News Limited had "hard questions" to answer.
But she does believe in having a "legitimate discussion" about privacy laws and has asked home affairs minister Brendan O'Connor to prepare a discussion paper. |
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