Hi Alex,
Getting back to my original point. I really don't see what can be done about people buying up newspapers. Any intervention is going to cause more problems than it would solve. Having a government department decide what can and can't be published or arbitrating on what they decide to be 'unbiased' can hardly be better than simply allowing people to buy and read the newspapers that they like. If a newspaper becomes biased and self-serving, then people are free to read something else.
There's plenty that can be done. You can legally break up monopolies as anti-competitive behaviour. You can limit cross-media ownership. You can extend defamation legislation so it applies to groups as well as individuals. You can establish minimum standards of qualification for a press license. You can have an public media print newspaper that's an independent statutory authority (e.g., the ABC in print). Some may say that these are restrictions on a free market. Others, like myself, would suggest that they are the protections required for a free market. People are only "free" to read something else if the alternatives are easily available. At the moment, the daily newspapers in Australia look like they'll be a choose between Rupert's view of the world and Gina's view of the world. It is not so simple just to suggest, "well, people can start another newspaper". For all but a select few, that's not a viable option. There are significant barriers to entry.
Instead why not just remove as much function of government as possible and allow free enterprise to take over?
Because the evidence is that it simply doesn't work. You end up with private monopolistic behaviour, which is in fact worse than a public monopoly - which is typically more democratic, has statutory independence etc. All the best, Lev