Paul Keating unleashes vitriolic attack on Nine’s takeover of Fairfax
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Paul Keating, architect of the Hawke government’s cross-media rules, has called on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to put the Nine-Fairfax merger under “high scrutiny”, and declared Nine has the “ethics of an alley cat”.
In a scathing statement, Keating said the takeover was “an exceptionally bad development”.
If Nine had a majority of the stock, as announced, it “will run the editorial policy,” he said.
I wish Paul Keating was still our PM – cutting through all the noise and delivering the truth.
Unfortunately I do believe the ACCC will allow this ‘merger’ to go ahead, as Nine and Fairfax did deal with different ends of the media spectrum. However, in the future if other media organisations take this approach, I feel the ACCC will be more strict approach.
Thoughts?
Totally agree – about Keating and the merger.
At this stage, do we have any other media organisations on this scale left for the ACCC to even worry about?
I fear that at best, the spectrums will eventually cancel each other out and retire to the mediocre middle, at worst the Age and the SMH will become the Daily Telegraph and everyone will be reading headlines with terrible puns about ex reality tv personalities having affairs with dodgy tradies : /
someone like Kyle Sandilands as P.M. by then….
Clearly PJK has an axe to grind with Nine…
BUT I still think he is right when he asks WHY the media laws were changed. How has the public interest been furthered by the change? And how will the public interest be served by a reduction in the number of local media voices?
Turncoat Turnbull strikes again
Poor Paul Keating, so sad that he’s obviously losing his memory. After all, it was he that abolished the two-station rule allowing his mates at the east-coast television networks to swallow up the smaller metros. And, of course, prior to that, his good mate Bob introduced aggregation which allowed those same networks to hold a gun to the heads of regional operators and finally crush them. So the two of them actually started the “dramatic close down in diversity” in television that he now has the gall to complain about. You reap what you sow Paulie boy.
Keating is the architect of today’s media. He gave Murdoch a free pass on the HWT. He intentionally cut HWT and Fairfax out of the loop when the major reforms were put in place. In fact he was open in his intent to blow up Fairfax. Now he cries about it. Waste of space.
Dinosaur…