There will be no royal commission, but we need to question News Corp's role in Australia
Australia’s media ownership is among the most concentrated in the developed world. This is not hyperbole – nor is it in some way “anti-Murdoch rhetoric” to state the facts.
News Corp publish seven of the 10 top Australian newspapers and own 65% of metropolitan newspapers by circulation. To quote their own figures, “more than 16 million Australians consume news and information across News Corp Australia’s suite of products” per month.
An Oxford University study conducted before we relaxed media ownership rules in 2016, a move that will arguably make things worse, concluded Australia has the most concentrated media ownership of all 26 countries surveyed. Australia is “dominated by News Corporation and Fairfax Media who together own the majority of national and capital city newspapers”, they concluded.
Additionally, we have seen a steady decline in the number of daily newspaper titles over the last few decades, culminating in News Corp shuttering over 100 print editions in May this year in response to the pandemic (76 of these will remain as digital mastheads and 36 will disappear entirely). Thousands of jobs have been lost as a consequence.
The trend is largely due to the growth of digital media and the dominance of social media platforms in competing for digital advertising dollars – but it doesn’t help that such a large slice of the news content we read on our screens is produced by one company and then consumed on one platform: Facebook.
The media ecosystem has fallen into the gravitational field of just a few central players and its orbit is spiralling ever closer to the centre.
Kevin Rudd launched a petition on Saturday calling for a royal commission into media ownership, describing
Murdoch media as a “cancer on our democracy”. The petition caused problems for the Parliament House website after 40,000 people flocked to sign it in the first 24 hours.
Given that he is a former prime minister, Rudd could arguably have tackled this in his time in office rather than petitioning for the issue now. It is also unlikely that this petition will be acted upon by parliament, let alone any recommendations it may have made being implemented: News Corp in particular has steadfastly supported the Coalition for at least a decade.
From the global warming crisis that is still a “debate” in the pages of the Australian to Sky News’ more recent “Dictator Dan” coverage during Melbourne’s lockdown, Murdoch-owned outlets have been producing editorials that have a conservative flavour for some time.
The government is not about to bite the hand that feeds it: there will be no royal commission, and if by some fluke it is made to order one, it will ignore the recommendations. Can you see the Coalition strengthening our media ownership laws, supporting regional media outlets, or restoring funding to public broadcasters like the ABC? Me neither. These are the kinds of recommendations a royal commission would make to strengthen Australian media diversity, and they are precisely the opposite of what our government wants to do.
If you ask the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) president, Marcus Strom, “the issues are clear already” even without a royal commission. Along with arguing that Google and Facebook should pay their fair share for Australian journalism, academics like myself and organisations like the MEAA have been very clear about what needs to be done to support a strong media ecosystem into the future.
But it is heartening to see the issue getting column inches again. Although Rudd’s petition is unlikely to find support with a government that benefits from News Corp’s favourable coverage, it may open a broader public conversation that we can all participate in.
A diverse and pluralistic media is vital to the functioning of our democracy – and Australia’s is receding by the hour. Though Rudd’s petition is arguably hyperbolic in its presentation, and Rudd has his own on-again-off-again history with Rupert Murdoch, it does state the statistics clearly.
It is time to assess – or at least acknowledge – the impact Murdoch has on public debate.