On the issue of one-paper towns, like Tasmania
And another comment from Christine Milne on biasWell, no, I don’t in the sense that I think people are starting to look for other forms of gathering their information, as well, and our local paper is important. Don’t get me wrong in relation to that. It is important around the regions. But people are certainly seeking their information from many different sources now, which gives them an opportunity to at least test the different agendas and the reality is we all have agendas, whether they’re right or wrong. We are all running an agenda of some sort, because we have beliefs, we have passions and we want to help bring the community with us according to what our belief and passion is. And at different times I feel that that is seen through the media too. Now, certainly I know I’ve spoken to Garry at times and said, “I don’t like what you said there,” and he says, “Well, somebody else doesn’t like what I’ve said over here either but Lara this is what happens.
Maybe I'm looking too much into this, but I find the above themes extremely dangerous. A Government determining what is or is not bias, who is fit or not fit to own and run newspapers, what is or is not fairness or balance. It just seems like a recipe for disaster.Look, the Murdoch press has been running a very strong campaign against action on climate change. The bias is extreme in The Australian in particular. You’ll see column inch after column inch after column inch of every climate sceptic in the country run with exactly the same authority as the intergovernmental panel on climate change as if they are the same. You’ll find, day after day, a real attempt at regime change. Now, a newspaper is supposed to be running with fairness and with balance and that paper is not doing it and one of the useful things about the hacking scandal in the UK is that it will lead to an inquiry into the media in Australia and that is well and truly overdue and we are, at last, going to see some real discussion about issues around rights to privacy, around issues like the level of ownership and dominance of the Murdoch press in several capital cities around Australia. We’ll also have a look at a range of other issues, including who are fit and proper people into whether we need that test of people to be running media outlets. So I think this is a really useful opportunity, especially at the media is changing so rapidly. Everything is going online. Newspapers online, you wonder if you can call them newspapers anymore in that sense, so it’s time we had a good inquiry and certainly bias is going to be one of the things that certainly will be looked at.
