In speech titled ‘New journalism for a new public’, the ABC’s Mark Scott has rung an alarm bell about media partisanship:
”The reason it feels like the media battle is being waged as though it’s winner-takes-all is because that’s exactly what it is…There are plenty of voices, but there will not be plenty of newspapers with different people controlling them.
The newspapers that survive will be powerful. The return of Lachlan Murdoch to his position of power in the family business was clearly a significant news story, not just for his company but for our society.
We will all watch to see how he wants to exercise that power.’
…Given the aggressive editorial positioning of some of their mastheads and their willingness to adopt and pursue an editorial position, an ideological position and a market segmentation, you could argue that News Corporation newspapers have never been more assertive in exercising media power.
This is worth reflecting on when thinking about life without Fairfax in print most days of the week. News Corp currently sells about 70 per cent of papers purchased in capital cities in Australia and, with the exception of the Fin, is a monopoly provider in Brisbane, Adelaide and Hobart.
With Fairfax perhaps retreating to a weekly edition in the future, fairly conservative modelling could see that figure at closer to 80 per cent, with Perth the only city without the News Corp monopoly through the week.
It is good news for the News Corp shareholders. The American evidence suggests that newspaper markets in most cities are shifting towards monopoly papers, and that in a reasonably-sized city a single paper should be able to make a return.”
He added that the:
”push to target content to profitable niches will grow…market segmentation in news based around specific political and ideological perspectives. As Fox News has shown in the US, it’s a way to make very significant money while other around are struggling.”
I’m not sure about the latter but I am about the former. For any keen observer, it has become very obvious that the Fairfax outlets have already significantly adopted that strategy. The AFR has swung to the Coalition and the metropolitan dailies have swung to Labor as their territory has been gobbled up by the Guardian.
Notice that I do not say swung to the “Left ” and “Right” because that’s not what’s happening. Scott is correct that these are political alignments not ideological ones.
It’s a natural a enough evolution for an Australia that has lost its ideological compass as it degenerates into a variety of rent-seeking oligopolies, the most paramount of which is the political parties.
For the economy, it means a boom in political posturing but ongoing reform paralysis and more can-kicking as the objective public commons shrinks from existence. If you can’t mobilise the centre, you can’t do jack.
