Apparently it needs to be said: an objective, balanced, diverse news media is vital for thriving democracy. If the govt wants to come up with policies like the Google/FB intervention, they need to first do something about the fact the current news media is none of these things.
The two main players pushing for the govt bill - Murdoch and Nine - are the most powerful and the least objective and balanced. They produce overt propaganda which advantages right wing and capital voices ahead of left and workers. The Libs support them because they support Libs.
The motivation behind Morrison’s attack on Google and Facebook has nothing to do with defence of a strong, diverse media, able to scrutinise power to benefit democracy. If he cared about that media, he would not defund, attack and intervene in the ABC.
No, like everything, Morrison’s motive for this bill is to keep his media magnate friends happy, and reward them for their partisan bias. And he’s risking an entire digital media industry - connection, awareness and advertising for almost every Australian person and business.
There’s far too much simplistic thinking in debate about the impact of social media and news media on democracy. Too many vested interested reject idea social media can be good for democracy, and also don’t want to hear that news media is not necessarily positive for democracy.
To put it bluntly, any dollar from Facebook or Google that helps prop up partisan media is a bigger threat to a fair, open and democratic public sphere than mad-uncle-Bob spreading rumours on the internet. Morrison can’t be trusted on this bill, just as he can’t on any other.
If news media organisations want to survive, they need to regain their most important asset - TRUST. People will not subscribe and pay for news they do not trust. 500,000 people signed a petition to investigate Murdoch media because they can see the organisation is untrustworthy.
The politicisation of the news media - something which seems to be getting worse every year, while at same time journos get more defensive about people pointing it out - needs to be addressed. The anti-competitive concentration of news media power in Australia has to be addressed
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