After more than 500,000 people signed a petition launched by former prime minister Kevin Rudd raising concerns about the influence of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, the Senate is to hold an inquiry into media diversity.
Last week, on 11 November, 2020, Sarah Hanson-Young moved a motion in the Senate to establish the inquiry, which is expected to scrutinise local media companies and how Google and Facebook have changed the way people access news. The motion was not opposed and passed without a vote.
The Senate referred the inquiry into the state of media diversity, independence and reliability in Australia to the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee for report by 31 March 2021.
The inquiry’s terms of reference are:
The state of media diversity, independence and reliability in Australia and the impact that this has on public interest journalism and democracy, including:
(a) the current state of public interest journalism in Australia and any barriers to Australian voters’ ability to access reliable, accurate and independent news;
(b) the effect of media concentration on democracy in Australia;
(c) the impact of Australia’s media ownership laws on media concentration in Australia;
(d) the impact of significant changes to media business models since the advent of online news and the barriers to viability and profitability of public interest news services;
(e) the impact of online global platforms such as Facebook, Google and Twitter on the media industry and sharing of news in Australia;
(f) the barriers faced by small, independent and community news outlets in Australia;
(g) the role that a newswire service plays in supporting diverse public interest journalism in Australia;
(h) the state of local, regional and rural media outlets in Australia;
(i) the role of government in supporting a viable and diverse public interest journalism sector in Australia; and
(j) any other related matters.
The closing date for submissions is 11 December 2020.
How to make a submission
If you require any special arrangements to enable you to participate in the Committee’s inquiry, please contact the Committee Secretariat. Further information regarding accessibility can be found at www.aph.gov.au/Help/Accessibility
Preparing a submission to an inquiry
The contact for the Committee Secretariat is:
Committee Secretary
Senate Standing Committees on Environment and Communications
PO Box 6100
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Phone: +61 2 6277 3526
Fax: +61 2 6277 5818
ec.sen@aph.gov.au
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
Comments
3 responses to “Have your say: Senate inquiry into media diversity in Australia”
The media ARE the government. THEY determine the information fed to the people that shapes their behaviour, both economic and civic. When the behaviour of the media is shaped by the exigencies of profit and loss, they are controlled by their advertisers, which nowadays are few: the world’s most powerful corporations. Our political system is control of the many by the few, in the interest of the few, who turn the many into their servant robots. The robots are made to run on fewer and fewer resources, especially educational resources which are reserved for those who can pay. That is why electoral democracy in an information market, with a so-called “free press”, ends in a banana republic.
It follows from this analysis, that the old-time SMH and The Age, which got their money mainly from the people’s classifieds rather than big advertisers, were more respectful of their readers, and did not feed them such appalling crap.
The media does not just affect the mind of the public .. It is the mind of the public.
The event horizon where contemplation is turned into acceptance of information.*
*Only for things un-Trump related of course ..
In that special exceptional case, we must accept the villain that is created for us by the media .. lest we have to deal with the embarrassment of contemplating how we fell for the heroes they create for us; that will failed us again.
Take the 38 steps but don’t take the 39th …. Here be dragons.
Lords Temporal to establish inquiry into the media.
….Read about it in the paper.
absit omen