On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 07:09:58PM +1000, Brent Wallis wrote:
Gday,
On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 9:52 AM, Peter Ross <Peter.Ross@bogen.in-berlin.de> wrote:
"Australia has unwittingly become a social experiment. A ruthless experiment on the fate of a society when a single media conglomerate, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, owns 167 newspapers and controls around 70% of the printed media market."
Could not agree more. The early (real) labour governments (Hawke/Keating) placed rules on cross ownership which prevented such things happening. Changing that was one of the Howard governments first steps in office. I believe history will show that it was one of his gravest errors.
actually, from his POV it's not an error at all. The result, a very biased right-wing pro-business-interest reactionary and regressive press, is exactly what he wanted.
I see opportunity ahead.
for astro-turfers, maybe. they'll get access to hundreds of qualified and experienced journalists at a bargain price, all competing with each other to shill their products / propaganda for a pittance.
A golden age of Journalism born of the democratisation that is the Internet. All those experienced editorial staff that are about to lose their jobs have skills and their employers sacking them should (hopefully) fuel passion.
a handful might take that risk. the rest have mortgages to pay and families to feed, house, clothe and educate. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au> BOFH excuse #201: RPC_PMAP_FAILURE