Cross media laws rile Murdoch. Anyone notice? Anyone care?

Anyone who's stumbled across this ramshackle of a blog over the course of the past few weeks could be forgiven for thinking this is a blog dedicated to berating poor old Rupert Murdoch. And believe what you will, but gratuitously insulting a 70 year old man is not what the Verbose Ghost is all about (that job falls to the lucky PBL and Fairfax PR staff). Now that's off my chest, I think it's fair to tell you that this post is again centred on Murdoch, News Corp and the current cross media reforms. Please don't let it put you off, because when you write about the machinations of the Australian media there are certain powerbrokers, businessmen and pundits (anyone say Jim Schembri?) who will invariably turn up more than others. Murdoch - still the most powerful media mogul in the world - is one of them, and I won't stop writing about him as long as he holds the world's old-school media in his grasp.

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm relieved that now the media laws have been announced the endless speculation and lobbying from PBL, Fairfax and News will finally come to an end: the legislation has basically passed through Parliament, and now the media can move on to speculating on who's going to buy who, and for how much. Not so for The Weekend Australian, who today published an acidic tirade of an editorial ("Coonan's media signal is blurred"), in which The Australian's editor Michael Stuchbury and his band of merry hacks decry Coonan's package because it doesn't give Murdoch the chance to own another free-to-air television station. Here's a selection:

But rather than accept reality, Senator Coonan is terrified of provoking the protectionists who own TV licences and will not wear change at any price. And so instead of announcing all existing arrangements are out of date, that ordinary Australians should be allowed to decide what they want to watch and who they will buy it off, she has come up with a formula designed to protect the present players...

This discriminates against News Limited, publisher of The Australian, which might bid for a licence if it could. In creating the Fox network in the US and revolutionising satellite broadcasting in Europe and Asia, News proprietor Rupert Murdoch demonstrated how to make money in mature TV markets by using new technology. But it is plain wrong to bar Mr Murdoch, or anybody else, from a market because he might make life tough for the existing oligopolists...

But we will not see it while old media organisations like the Nine Network and John Fairfax gut their newsrooms to save money, when their future should lie in expanding the size and quality of their news staff. If Senator Coonan was really committed to revolutionising media, she would abandon all regulation to allow existing and new media companies to make the money they need to provide the news services Australia deserves.

The News Corp campaign over these latest media laws has been probably the most audacious, blatant and pointless attempt to bully some favourable policy out of the Howard Government we've seen for quite some time now - from any industry. On the strength of the vicious language - which thrashes poor old Helen Coonan's competency in the communications portfolio, as well as the Howard Government's commitment to a competetive media landscape - it's pretty clear Murdoch's fallen out of favour with his former Liberal Party confidants. Murdoch is notoriously politically fickle, which probably comes more out of political opportunism than any burning ideology (Murdoch unexpectedly dropped his support for the Whitlam Labor Government in 1975 and had his Australian papers throw their editorial weight behind Malcom Fraser at the '75 election). So it really will be interesting to see who the News tabloids support at next year's federal election. Murdoch hasn't needed to seriously question Howard's legilsative agenda until now, but unless the Prime Minister can come up with an olive branch to quell Rupert's anger Howard may have fight on his hand come the next election. "It's democracy Jim, but not as we know it."