I believe in free speech and that includes a free press.
Consequently I’m approaching the Federal Government’s media reform proposals with great care and will only support them if they are genuinely warranted and well crafted.
Until I see the detail of the proposals I can’t say for sure where I’ll land on this issue. But from government briefings and meetings with stakeholders I’ve already developed some broad areas of concern.
For a start I’m not comfortable with the Government’s interest in abolishing the current Reach Rule which restricts any one commercial television network to no more than 75% of the market. I think this rule is worthwhile because it encourages diversity of media ownership, especially in regional areas.
While I do believe in a free and largely unfettered internet, I’m also concerned that web content has apparently not been considered properly in the Government’s review and policy development, even though so much content is now available online which used to be the domain of newspapers and commercial television.
And I’m concerned the Government is being hypocritical by demanding more local content on the commercial television stations at the same time it’s chronically underfunding such content on the ABC and SBS. Hence I expect to see increased funding for the public broadcasters, including for the ABC in Hobart, in parallel with any move to demand more local content on the commercial stations.
Finally there is the issue of the proposed public interest test for media ownership. This is one area wide open to political interference, and effectively media censorship, unless it’s very carefully thought out.
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• Christine Milne: CHRISTINE MILNE: Well I saw the front page today of the newspaper and thought to myself that they have gone completely over the top and in fact discredited themselves. It’s a tabloid front page and no one could possibly take it seriously. On the strategy more generally, on the whole media package, I have to say that if the Government was serious about media reform it wouldn’t have put into place such a fake time line, it would have looked at doing something in a more considered way. I think what you’ve got here is a Government extremely divided on media reform saying that they are going to hold, they don’t want the Parliament to be able to make changes suggests to me that Stephen Conroy has only just got the numbers inside the Labor Party and can’t risk any changes or he will lose them. They don’t seem to be serious about media reform at all. More, here
