Too much power
Canadian publisher Conrad Black's need to feed his enormous ego by revealing personal and political exploits (exploitations) in his self-important autobiography has lifted the lid once more on the shady dealings between leading political figures and the enormously powerful media proprietors.
Keating promised to "champion" Black's cause of increased ownership of the Fairfax media group if its stable of papers provided "balanced" (read favourable) political reportage in the lead-up to the March federal election. Likewise, opposition leader John Hewson apparently indicated a willingness to further Black's ambitions.
But the main point here is not what deals were struck. Nor is it a question of increasing foreign ownership; after all, Rupert Murdoch, now a US citizen, already owns the majority of the print media and big chunks of TV.
Neither is it a question of the political beliefs of an unsavoury character like Black, the entrepreneur who began his business life selling copies of exam answers that he'd stolen from the exclusive private school he attended.
It's more fundamental than all of this.
Why is it that, if a media proprietor in this country breaks the media ownership regulations, there is no prosecution, but rather the laws are changed? How is it that Black and Co readily have the ear of politicians? Why does the prime minister worry what Murdoch, Packer and Black think and, more importantly, say?
Because the legendary concentration of press ownership in Australia gives this select band of individuals a power to influence, a power to manipulate, that is so great as to make a mockery of democracy.
They wield their power daily to champion the rich and browbeat the poor; to lionise the strong and ridicule the weak; to twist and turn, to promote or to ignore, to hide or relentlessly attack, to distort and misinform in pursuit of their own narrow "free market" ideology and their own personal interests.
Short of changing how this society is run, a pressing task in itself, the media bosses and their compliant and cowardly supporters in parliament will continue to do deals to their exclusive advantage.
That's why it is essential to support the alternative media — a media, like this paper, that struggles against the odds to put another point of view, that attempts to fill the enormous gaps and to break the deafening silence about what is really happening in the corporate new world order. A paper that strives to inform in order to change the status quo.
With only one more issue of Green Left Weekly before the end of 1993, we urge you, unashamedly, to give yourself an early Christmas present by making a donation that supports the continued efforts of this paper, your paper, to shed a little light in a Black media landscape.