Media bosses are doing its best to discredit the Finkelstein Report and to convince ordinary Australians that the protections it seeks are not in their best interest. The main recommendation of the Federal Government's Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation is for a publicly-funded regulatory authority to replace the Press Council, which is operated by the media companies themselves.
Fairfax's Australian Financial Review had media industry heavyweights speak at its Future Forum on Thursday. It asserted in its editorial the next day that the 'old-school' view of the media held by the Finkelstein inquiry 'no longer exists'.
In this new world, [Austar pay TV chief John] Porter's warning resonates: Australia should 'stop believing that paternalistic government can keep up with changes in technology and the market'.
It could be that the media bosses do have a better understanding of new technology than bureaucrats employed by the government. But if that is the case, it does not follow that they can be trusted to make and police their own rules.
The commercial media bosses' main responsibility is to build revenue for shareholders, not to protect consumers from harm. We would not let big tobacco specify the size of health warnings on cigarette packs, so why should we allow media bosses to decide on the media that is best for us?
An editorial published in the Weekend Australian earlier this month went much further in its attempt to damn the report. The writer depicted Justice Ray Finkelstein as the victim of a left-wing ideological 'conspiracy'. This was perpetrated by academics who are 'unsuccessful' media practitioners engaged in the 'pseudo-discipline of media studies'.
Mr Finkelstein's reliance on academics to gauge the performance of the media contaminates his report with error ... The empirical failings of these poachers-turned-gamekeepers do not appear to trouble Mr Finkelstein, who quotes at length from their submissions and 'research' to claim that the press is so biased and malevolent that it should be controlled by a government-funded body.
Dr Anne Dunn is Associate Professor in media and communications at the University of Sydney and President of the Journalism Education Association of Australia. She responds to the editorial's assertion that the claim of media studies to be vocational 'amounts to fraud'. Her explanation is that the courses are primarily designed to provide a broad education rather than practical instruction.
A university level degree with a major in journalism or media production will seldom 'claim to be vocational' ... because a university degree is widely understood to offer something more.
Among other qualities, Dunn argues that a university education fosters the ability to conduct research, use evidence and construct arguments. These, she suggests, are not evident in the Weekend Australian's editorial and other media attacks on the Finkelstein Report.
Moreover there is an essential link between study of the humanities and a humane view of the world that is represented in the Finkelstein Report but missing from the media bosses' cries for self-regulation. These 'old-school' values are more relevant to determining the rights and wrongs of media practice than merely an understanding of new technology and markets.