Monbiot on Murdoch and Media

This week, George Monbiot reflects in his Blog and the Guardian on how media censor themselves by what he refers to as "anticipatory compliance".

When I was studying journalism in Canada in the late 70s, this was summarised succinctly as: "You don't have to tell an editor what to write if you hire the right editor".

In those days, the Thomson media empire owned virtually all daily and weekly printed news media (well over 100 daily newspapers) in Canada alone. A much smaller group, Southam, owned 6 or 7, including the "Ottawa Citizen", the major daily in the capital. There were a handful of independents.

As a daily newspaper print journalist then, you would typically have worked for either Thomson or Southam or you didn't work. It was rare to have more than one newspaper in a single city not all owned by the same people, Toronto being the major exception in english-speaking Canada, with three. The french-language media in Quebec were more diverse but little read outside of Quebec. Anywhere, the hours were long and the pay was crap. Smoking in the office was not only common but virtually compulsory.

After working this out, I saw no desirable future in any of that, so abandoned journalism as a career.

In New Zealand, I found much the same situation. Large media monopolies owning more or less all major dailies. INL (then part-owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp) owned more or less everything in daily print except the NZ Herald, which was owned by the Horton family. I think the Otago Daily Times also stood alone, along with the Wairarapa Times-Age.

The dictum above regarding "hiring the right editors" was played out starkly after National won the 1990 election, when the previously strongly pro-MMP Dominion in Wellington, under Karl Du Fresne, was converted into the strongly anti-MMP Dominion under Richard Long.

Many of Du Fresne's senior editorial staff (like Al Morrison) were purged or left before too much time passed. In talking to two of them whom I knew, they both separately said that du Fresne's consensus-style editorial policy approach had been replaced with a more dictatorial one under Long. Long later did the honest thing and made his obvious political leanings official by joining the National Party's staff as media chief. Tim Pankhurst took over at the Dominion Post and remains there.

Monbiot's context is different - a book about Rupert Murdoch's unsuccessful Chinese ventures having trouble getting any media attention - but the principle is essentially the same one: media people reporting (or not) what they know their boss, the proprietor, will be happy with.

Given this sort of thing is all but inevitable in any commercial (or public) media context, I would think it therefore essential that ownership of media be diverse and not be allowed to become concentrated in the hands of any single group or a single person. The result of excessive media concentration may still be "freedom of speech", sure enough, but that is not the same thing as diversity of opinion. The latter is arguably just as important in terms of being able to conduct any serious public debate or acheive anytying resembling a balanced perspective.

I'm tempted to paraphrase George W Bush's famous quote about dictatorships as "I'm all in favour of freedom of the press as long as I own all the newspapers." How far from the truth is that in New Zealand?

The recent fracas about the new electoral finance law and the NZ Herald's campaign opposing it, got me thinking.

If you wanted to avoid laws regarding campaigning and spending limits, all you have to do is own a daily newspaper or radio or TV network. There, your biases and opinions and campaigns can be openly conducted through your editorial content and you can spend as much money as you like backing your favourites, right up to the black-out period before an election. You don't need to conform to any laws regarding spending limits or caps as doing so would be to violate your right to "freedom of speech". Never mind you own all the newspapers in any given city and no one else has a voice as loud as yours.

In the US, Rupert Murdoch's "Fox News" cable network is an excellent example of how a media proprietor can campaign day and night for one party, the Republicans, and not be subject to any electoral finance laws. Fox would be an example of "anticipatory compliance" on steroids.

What is there to stop our own media doing exactly the same?