In Britain, the phone-hacking scandal has put Rupert Murdoch’s media empire under unprecedented scrutiny. Questions are being asked about News Corporation’s influence over British democracy — its capacity to make and break prime ministers and to set the policy agenda of the day.
In Australia, similar questions must also be asked. News Limited controls 70 per cent of our nation’s media, representing the greatest concentration of media ownership in the democratic world.
The question for politicians and the community in this context is whether this huge concentration of media ownership and dwindling diversity is in the public interest. We can all argue about what constitutes media bias and what doesn’t, but with less and less diversity of media coverage and opportunities for journalists to dig deeper into an issue, proper scrutiny of policymakers of all stripes and persuasions is in fact limited — via redwolf.newsvine.com
RSS – Posts