[PEN-L:1122] Re: Media Ownershp

[Bill Rosenberg <w.rosenberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As usual I'm late in on this discussion - time and time zones wait for
no man. I'm sorry Mark Miller's gone, and hope he'll be back. It's not
that I necessarily side with him (I didn't know him from a bar of soap
before this I'm afraid!) but it has been a very interesting
discussion and useful to me.

Coincidentally I spent an hour and a half this morning speaking to an
seminar at the local Workers' Educational Association on this very
topic: who owns the news media in New Zealand. I used some of the
material from the beginning of this debate in the seminar. No, I'm not
a "media expert" or "critic" - my interest is ownership.

Concentration, and overseas ownership, of the media is very high here
in New Zealand - I summarise the position at the end of this message
and can provide more detail to anyone interested.

To answer Doug's challenge: I think it can be demonstrated why it
matters in our context. All but two of our major dailies is now
Mur-doch owned. Previously (10-20 years ago) there was quite some
variety amongst them. The capital's "Dominion" was an appalling rag
(not much better now) but the independent "Press" and "Waikato Times"
had reputations for reasonable international coverage and a variety of
views in their columns. Far from ideal, but appreciably better than
now.

Now all are INL owned and have been remodelled with the help of some
US "expert"-colourful, bigger print, aiming for the 20-35 year old
market in com-petition with TV. Content is very lightweight and
variety of opinion rarely allowed outside the centre-right to
far-right end of the spectrum. I know a senior, rather conservative,
journalist who retired early from one of the newspapers because he
could not stomach the superficiality of the approach being taken.

There is noticeable contrast with the INP owned "New Zealand Herald"
(the biggest circulation daily in the country). While it still plugs
a right wing line editorially it allows a wide variety of views and
has some regular vaguely leftish, well-informed columnists. INP's
weekly, the "Listener", one of the highest circulation weeklies in
the country, has a definite left-of-centre flavour, with some
excellent investigative reporting and analysis.

So concentration has rought loss in the variety of views available
to many INL readers and (would-be) writers, and awful international
news coverage.

But I don't advocate more competition as the answer - the record is
that it will make some, but not enough, difference. Bear in mind too
that in most New Zealand cities, there is not likely to be any
competition amongst the dailies - populations are too small. I
advocate public funded media - print as well as (strengthened)
broadcast.

I disagree with the view that we should stop worrying about the
narrowness of the mass media and just use our own. We end up talking
mainly to ourselves in that case: the only largish circulation media
open to us are union publications, which are worth using, but I
suspect are not well read. In addition, the mass media have a crucial
part in setting the political agenda and what is seen as "important"
in the public eye.

Bill

The situation in New Zealand is unfortunately very simple:

Newspapers:
90% of audited circulation of dailies owned by two companies
- Independent Newspapers Ltd (INL, controlled by News Corporation)
and Independent Newspapers Plc (INP controlled by the O'Reilly family
of Ireland)

TV:
Public TV (TVNZ) has two free to air channels (the most popular).
Canwest of Canada has two.
INL controls the only national pay TV (Sky TV)
Various small regional stations and fledgling cable TV operators.

Radio:
60% of advertising revenue goes to The Radio Network
controlled by INP (56 stations at end 1997).
Similar number of stations owned by local company Radio Pacific.
Canwest owns eight stations.
Lots of smaller operators.

The heads of all three main companies - INL (Murdoch), INP (Tony
O'Reilly) and Canwest (Izzy Asper) have similar political outlooks
which they are happy to state: all have publicly held New Zealand up
as an example to others as to how countries should be run.
Bill Rosenberg, w.rosenberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx