Parliament has rarely been addressed by representatives of such a toxic and malignant industry than when Michael Miller of News Corp, Jeff Howard of Seven West Media, and Mike Sneesby of the Nine Network appeared before the joint committee inquiring into social media last Friday — demanding Facebook and Instagram be banned in Australia and claiming tech giant Meta was blackmailing the Australian media and government.
Blackmail. It’s hard to find a purer example of pot-kettle namecalling than Australia’s biggest media companies accusing anyone of “blackmailing” governments.
For generations, Australia’s media companies — and especially the commercial television networks — have worked by blackmailing governments. It’s their entire MO: any government that ever threatened their commercial interests, or failed to grant their incessant demands for ever more regulatory favours, knew it would be bashed and belted across every news bulletin in the country until it complied.
For generations, the interests of Australian consumers were subordinated to those of the big TV networks, with successive governments not merely preventing any competitors from entering the Australian media but also presiding over the steady destruction of competition — to the point where our media landscape looks more like that of Beijing than any healthy democracy. First, new channels weren’t allowed. Then Pay TV was blocked in Australia, and when it was allowed, it was hobbled. Digital TV was delayed and regulated to the point of absurdity (remember Richard Alston’s risible “datacasting”?)
The only government that ever truly stepped out of line was the Gillard government, when Stephen Conroy dared to demand the industry regulate itself better around editorial standards. The united response from the media was froth-mouthed rage and the effort was killed off.
The gambling industry has its donations and network of politically connected lobbyists. The fossil fuel industry has its revolving-door appointments. The arms industry controls the national security lobby. The pharmacists have their pensioner-based scare campaigns. But only the big media companies can threaten to blackmail governments and know they can deliver on it reliably, on TV, radio, print and online.
Comfortable, complacent and confident they could blackmail any government into compliance with its demands, Australia’s media oligopoly was the 800lb gorilla of vested interests. Until they encountered, in the US tech giants, 8,000 lb gorillas that took their lunch out of their hands and began happily consuming it right in front of them, as Facebook and Google did — or took their customers away by the millions, as Netflix has.
The response from Australia’s media was the usual — run shrieking to government and demand that the competitors be brought under control with more laws literally designed by the media lobby, in the form of the news media bargaining code. After playing nice for a time, Meta has decided it can’t be bothered observing the time-honoured rituals of the Australian media oligopoly. So now Australia’s media companies demand its banning.
To see News Corp, Nine and Seven in Canberra pressing the case for a ban on social media (for kids, for everyone, what’s the difference) is to witness a gang of now elderly standover merchants trying the same thuggish tactics that worked in the good-old bad-old days — and all pretending that somehow they are doing so in Australia’s national interest.
Consider them. Seven West Media is a grubby right-wing outlet for rapists and war criminals, with journalistic standards more appropriate for the National Enquirer than any decent media company.
Nine Entertainment is plagued with alleged sexual predators whose behaviour is systematically covered up while the company’s journalists purport to hold the powerful to account.
And, biggest of all, News Corp: a suppurating tumour on global media that has, in its climate denialism and support for Donald Trump, endangered the planet and helped bring its foremost democracy to the brink of a fascist autocracy, a collection of propaganda outlets that lower standards of civil discourse, divide and polarise communities, and smear anyone working for the public good in any market they defile with their presence.
That any of them dare to claim they are the victims of blackmail is hilarious. That none of their diminishing number of journalists and commentators, usually so quick to turn their gimlet eyes on double standards and hypocrisy, have bothered to call out the absurdity, is entirely expected. That they’ll go on trying to assail their competitors using the only tool they know how — threatening politicians with retribution if they don’t regulate them away — is entirely predictable.
Meanwhile, their revenues and audiences, in inverse proportion to their protestations, will continue to drain away. Turns out, spending all that time perfecting the art of blackmail and standover came at the expense of actually giving Australians what they wanted.
Do News Corp, Seven and Nine have a valid argument against Meta? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
