The Media Reforms - a news story powered by media values

A great cartoon by Bill Leak in The Weekend Australian 16/17 March, 2013

 

The escalation and decline of the recent, highly contentious, media reforms proposed by Senator Conroy in mid March, 2013, presented us with the lifespan of a classic “newsworthy” story.
 

In terms of Golding’s and Elliot’s News values (1979), the story gave us:

·         Drama (alarm that these "reforms" could destroy the freedom of the press and could drop the merger and acquisition limitations currently in place),

·         Visual attractiveness (think of the pictures of news Limited CEO Kim Wilkins being grilled in the Senate enquiry),

·         Entertainment (everyone likes a fight between powerful protagonists – in this case media empires and the Commonwealth Government),

·         Importance (no-one would deny that this story was of major importance to news businesses, the government and the public),

·         Size (the story was prominent in all news media for nearly two weeks),

·         Proximity (it had significance to everyone),

·         Negativity (the proposed reforms were presented as being unreservedly negative in their effects),

·         Brevity (although there were six bills proposed, the major import of the reforms was boiled down to unwelcome government regulation and potential control of the media - especially in a contentious matter - by a Public Interest Media Advocate),

·         Recency (there were multiple exclusives and scoops engineered by the various parties),

·         Elites (what could be more elite that the Commonwealth Government and powerful news interprises?), and

·         Personalities (especially various high profilte members of the Commonwealth Government, the Independents and the CEO’s of News Ltd., Seven West and Fairfax Media).

Of course, it would be naïve to think that the media have fought against the proposed legislation (and particularly the regulatory aspect) purely because of their concern for the public interest.  They have a strong vested interest in maintaining their independence which is quite separate from the democratic advantages their position may bring for the community generally.

 It has been argued by Ben Goldsmith (http://theconversation.com/why-new-media-reforms-are-bad-news-for-australian-content-12953) that the two pieces of legislation that were able to progress through the House of Representatives on Tuesday, 19^th March, were not entirely antithetical to the interests of the media barons.  Goldsmith notes, for example, that The Television Licence Fees Amendment Bill 2013 will actually reduce the amount that free-to-air stations need to pay for their licences, while The Broadcasting Legislation  Amendment (Convergence Review and Other Measures) Bill 2013 has the capacity to lessen,  rather than to increase, Australian content through the re-broadcasting of old Australian content and the broadcasting of new Australian material on the multi-media channels owned by individual media companies.

 
The demise of the media reforms story (for the time being anyway) is testament to the strength of the next major story to hit the media – the leadership tussle within the Parliamentary Labour Party.  The newer story (which has now, itself, been largely overtaken by subsequent events) wiped the story of the media reforms off the front pages of the newspapers and the headlines of the online news overnight - partially because the media reforms had run their course but largely because the Labour Party drama was  a powerful new force driven by the very same values as the preceding story.