Media Ownership and Regulations in Australia
Media ownership refers to the mainstream of media outlets possessed by a minority of companies and particularly by those who view such association as unfavorable, risky, and problematic to describe ownership structure of mass media industries (Cunningham, 2002, p.55).
Origin of Australian Media Ownership Pattern
“What is the origin of this pattern of Australian media ownership?’’ In 1901 when Australia Federation was framing, the founders gave a countless responsibility to the Australian Congress for the national policy of communications. In the Constitution of Australia section 51(v), power was given the commonwealth over telegraphic, postal, and telephonic services such that the federal government has accountability over internet and media broadcast services as well. Print media was not predicted in 1901 as a question to nation regulations (Cunningham, 2010, p.45).
Influence of Broadcasting Regulations on Newspaper Structure
However, the newspaper structure was influenced by broadcasting related regulations, competition, and overseas ownership. Essential justifications have emerged behind the regulation of broadcasting in Australia due to the limitation of electromagnetic space underpinning government policies. Broadcast licenses were granted to specific corporations and individual groups by the Commonwealth government. The media had the privilege of accessing public assets, but in return, it had to carry license with them. Also, the government has assumed broadcasting to influence the society especially intrusion allegation into individuals’ survival of commercial TV with its persuasive agenda-setting dimensions. The strive for radical processes to balance content is the sort to be administered through broadcasting authority (Cunningham, 2010, p.50).
Why Concentrated Media Ownership Matters
“Does it matter, and does anyone care, that Australia’s pattern of media ownership and control is so highly concentrated?’’ The opinions of high levels of concentrated ownership can be explained through potential power abuse, expression diversity loss, interest conflict, and repressive journalistic culture (Bennett et al., 2001, p.64).
i. Potential abuse of power
Influences in contradiction of the attentiveness of possession rest on the evidence that the unrestrained attention of power is objectionable. A minor collection of individuals who are unelected controls media firms and they are inexplicable to the public. For the case of a proprietorship owning a large portion of the media group, they have high probabilities of dominating influences over journalistic content and regulations. The postulation that media are significant in persons’ lives, its power, and probably for its abuse is of central concern (Peel & Steen, 2007, p.1058).
ii. Expression diversity loss
Print media offers a wider range of diverse opinions, biases, and values in a democracy that is healthy. No citizen is subject to accepting certain positions or arguments, but they have a democratic right of giving their views in a desirable media system while the insufficient diversity of ideologies within the media system makes it problematic. The commercial ideology of Australian media is the institutional reality of people’s economic system (Lewis, 2001, p.100).
iii. Interest conflict
In Australian business arena, media outlets form the monetary dealings, which can cause interest conflicts in print media ownership that deals with other organisation activities. Vic Carroll stated that,
“All media are potentially compromised when the media owner/controller has substantial non-media interests. They are politically compromised when the non-media interests involve government licenses. We do not expect News Corporation newspapers to be vigorously critical of the two-airline policy while News controls Ansett. We do not expect them to investigate the terms and conditions of Fox Studios’ deal with the NSW government over the Sydney Showground fearlessly. We do not expect the Nine Network’s current affairs programs to be profoundly skeptical of casino values. But we should expect someone to be doing these things, and that will only happen while there are diversity and separation of ownership.’’ (Lewis, 2001, p.112)
Conflict of interest also arises in a situation where a minister with collective duties for media regulation becomes captured by specific media commercial interests.
iv. Suppressive journalistic culture.
Substantial variances of view occur across individual media organisations and profitable media. It is the mutual editorial exercise of most everyday newspapers to command senior journalists with completely different opinions to engrave through featured articles on main matters.
Broadcasting
The Australian history of media ownership patterns demonstrates unexpected partisan partiality and realism on management near media firms mediated to assist the party’s interests best. The broadcasting rule has been politicized and managed the government policy areas incompetently since Alliance by equal borders of Australian main radical field. Australia media policy is manifested by Ozzie mateship towards media tycoons by the day’s governments. Broadcasting is diverse; two principals have customarily stranded advanced stages of policies in this scope. Airwaves are used by broadcasters to convey to listeners. The spectrum is a resource of the public with an unlimited capacity channel whose ownership and licensing are regulated. Television and radio media have superior influence to influence their viewers by their widespread presence in current society. The consumption of this image and sound media has less specific separable items than media that rely on payment for the service delivery. It is due to this reason that it makes sound and image media be used for advertisement. Underpinning diversity by structural rule is considered as a wanted policy outcome. Broadcaster categories include commercial, community, and the public. The system of broadcasting was recognized during the Broadcasting Act 1942 that defined the licensees’ conduct, service areas, and number (Cunningham, 2002, p.57).
Film and Video
The production, exhibition, and distribution of film and video industries majorly follow the press model of regulation. Attempt to regulate and exhibit the film, and video industry has resulted in quotas for Australian material since the 1970s. However, the market has been a field with oligopoly and significant overseas ownership. The government policy approach has been to subsidize creation rather than intercede complete physical regulation in the delivery of the pictures in Australia. The video business is less the entity of governing involvement than film. Classification based on the restriction of the intolerable material institute the core methods of directive although it applies to opposition regulation. The online consumption industry of film and video has been caught up in technology convergence (Peel & Steen, 2007, p.1050).
Arts
The traditional arts governance is the cleanest form of intervention input that shows a highly organized approach with the federal body in Australian Council providing subsidized art activities. Also, the government has intervened through tax incentives to inspire organization care and by locating the Australian council (Cunningham, 2002, p.60).
Internet and Telecommunications
The Internet is a very decentralized worldwide network state with failed national policy approaches. Gillard Labor government stated that ‘‘to introduce compulsory filters for objectionable internet content were met with considerable industry and community concern, as they would catch much more than what is intended and slow down broadband speeds’’ (Cunningham, 2002, p.61).
Telecommunications has seen dramatic moves in plans and regulatory measures. Telecommunications strategy has advanced from a scheme grounded about an extremely structured communal domination and delivery of elementary services. The changing policy has transformed from conduct regulation restricted on the market entry to structural regulation having a more competitive environment that generates effective industry which is more approachable to customers and end users (Peel & Steen, 2007, p.1060).
Policy Issues in Media and Communications
Policy issues are fundamental to the learning of media and communications causing debates in public administrations, political economy, and government. The debates are regularly grounded in normative assumptions about the performance of media, such as wider communal media access, freedom of media outlets, media content diversity, media content objectivity, societal solidarity promotion, cultural diversity, and promotion of quality media. Political economy approach forms the major ground for the assumptions. The approach gives an exploration of questions for government complicity demonstrations and regulation agencies dominant in media economic interests (Cunningham, 2002, p.60).
Media and Communication Policy in Australia
Public policy-making practices in Australian broadcasting constitute mechanisms such as laws, regulations, and policies. The government actions in media communications encourage some behaviors while discouraging others. The regulations for media communications can be in the form of direct regulation, self-regulation, and co-regulation. Due to consideration of nature of media as an industry that has led to regulatory and output approach variation laterally on the axis, reaching as of a highly controlled business of broadcasting to a virtually exposed market in the sector of design, film, and picture circulation and exposition (Silverblatt, 2013, p.395).
Print media are mostly subjected to general laws regarding laws of libel, contempt, trade practices, monopoly, and competition. Trade Practices Act excludes unions, which would affect one corporation being in a situation to control a marketplace. The Trade Practices Act is the overall rule and classically do not correctly function in media areas. Normally, print media is highly focused with controlling inhibitors to its operation of Australia's policy principle of competition about its smaller market, the high cost of infrastructures, and loss of classified advertisement revenue. The Australian Press Council formed in 1976 is a self-regulatory figure acting as a solitary medium precise form of regulation (Rawolle, 2005, p.708).
Possession and regulation are perpetual subjects in the media field. The media proprietorship deregulation argues in favor of lessening that entails the necessity in the minor Australian marketplace for individual savings in media. The large organizations often argue that they require being bigger if they are to fit in the international market and remain competitive. The argument against change, control rules, and ownership insist that Australia contains the most concentrated media sectors (Hjarvard, 2013, p.100).
Media and Cultural Diversity
Describing and accounting for cultural taste social distribution in current Australia and the patterns of cultural input to which they give rise have been of great concern. The government has been put to taste the farness it is going with the existing trends on debate policies. Considering the anglophone world, the government reduced the study of states value engagement and accountability as depicted by the quote that states perspective, “since letting alone is the chief function of government, this means, among other things, that state education goes, as a matter of course, and with it, all state-aided museums, libraries, galleries of art, parks, and pleasure grounds’’ (Hughes, 1993, p.205).
There have been debates on media and cultural diversity with an examination of culture researched on the study of media. The results have depicted research work entailing media and culture that does not systematically define the culture concept. In the 1970s, Australia was an ethnically diverse society with unacceptable diversity such that the only people that existed were the immigrants and Australians. The Australians were British with an Anglocentric approach to life who chose London as the first spot of their foreign while the immigrants were those individuals who spoke in tongues foreign languages and worked differently. The children were thought Anglocentric history (Rawolle, 2005, p.710).
The media of the 1970s had all programs broadcasted and put on newspapers in English due to fear of subversion despite the immigration of non-English speakers in large post-World War II. It is stated that “In 1970, on our television screens Superman was relentlessly fighting for the American Way of Life, Hawaii Five-O's Steve Mc Garret was defending the American Way of Life, FBI was doing the same but on mainland USA. Star Trek was boldly carrying the American Way of Life to where no one has gone before, and Gunsmoke, late at night, was blasting everything that did not fit the American Way of Life. On our screens, we also watched the intelligent and subtle 'Carry on Films', Carry on Matron, Carry on Doctor, Carry on Sergeant, and Carry on Nurse’’ (Silverblatt, 2013, p.400).
Listening over the radio and watching television, one had to assume that the universe was all made by the British and the U.S. Cricket was the most highly appreciated sport of all times. Individuals who broadcasted did not reflect diversity as well such that there were no strange voices and no black faces.
The Australia of today is vibrant with a diverse culture, which is perceived as an economic and societal strength. The right to speech and sharing of one’s culture is highly appreciated with children learning more in history lessons of Australia. The adoption of multiculturalism greatly contributed to the change in culture as a government policy with other introduction of policies to manage the diversity (Jose, 2009, p.200).
The media has been used to propel the urge of embracing cultural differences. From Robert Hughes, he criticized the political and cultural adoption of his nation and offered a bright idea of defending multiculturalism. In his quotes, he stated that ‘‘Who talks of 'Asians' now, even as we utter our vague generalizations about 'European' culture? There are only Chinese, Japanese, Indonesians, Cambodians, and within even these national categories lie complexities of identity and heritage that are lost on the distant foreigner. However, my father thought ever more abstractly than this. He rarely mentioned Asia to me. He called it the Far East, meaning the Near North, and would not have considered going there. The Far East of where? East of Eden: that is, east of England, a country in which, by his death, he had spent less than three of his fifty-six years, in between tours of duty flying a Sop with Camel in France for his King and Empire in World War 1. Today, if you asked a twelve-year-old Australian boy what he thought about 'the East', he might hesitate: what does the oldie mean? New Zealand is in the east; maybe he means that, or Peru, which is even farther east.\\\" (Hughes, 1993, p.213).’’
Secondly, he quoted that ‘‘It is probable that young Australians, away down there in what so many Americans persist in imagining as a sort of Texas conducted by other means at the bottom of the globe, have a far better picture of the rest of the world Near North included, than their American equivalents have or are likely to get. Education has given it to them and, of late, by television: the Australian government sponsors not just a few programs but an entire network channel, SBS, broadcasting seven days a week, which presents news, documentaries, film and commentary from all over the world, in twenty languages from Arabic to Tagalong (with English subtitles). One could imagine the howls of outrage about 'cultural fragmentation' that would issue from the mandarins of American conservatism if Washington were to even think of spending taxpayers' money on such a scheme in the United States. If SBS's programming has any effect on the Australian policy, it is probably to cement it through mutual tolerance and curiosity rather than to fragment it into zones of cultural self-interest. In Australia, no Utopia but a less truculent immigrant society than this one, intelligent multiculturalism works to everyone's social advantage, and the conservative crisis, talk about creating 'a cultural tower of Babel' and so forth is seen as obsolete alarmism of a fairly low order.’’ (Hughes, 1993, p.215).
Bibliography
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