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I was there and the Minister did not say media reform and 75% was back on the agenda. He was quite circumspect and noted there are a range of views but that he agreed that a true consensus was key. Not sure who the source is for this comment but it is not accurate and in fact a little misleading.
While city/regional mergers might be good for the corporate bottom line, they will be bad for the nation’s knowledge economy and, potentially, seriously adverse for the practice of democracy at every level of government in Australia, from the shire to the house on the hill.
Editorial policy in news organisation is shaped by ownership: just compare the reporting of this and previous governments by News Corp. and Fairfax newspapers.
The 75% reach rule had the intent of ensuring some modest diversity in the ownership and control of broadcast TV licenses, though the boards of the licensee companies are still made up, largely, of conservative old men in suits.
At present, eight commercial TV news organisation cover the country, including NBN and Imparja. City/ regional mergers will reduce that number to five or fewer. Local news in regional Australia will suffer first, as it has done in places like Mildura and Canberra.
The Internet has been cited as a diverse news source: that is furphy.
The Internet is good at multitudinous reporting of the same, existing news sources and facilitating access to a prodigious number of untested and unreliable sources. The Internet also provides a blizzard of opinion, most of which obscures rather than reveals the facts of events.
Today, there are fewer journalist reporting first hand on Australian news, from fewer location, that for many decades.
That can’t be good for wise decisions making on any issue.