Rudd is right. Australia’s media regulators are toothless. A new regime is needed, but unlikely
Welcome to the third week of Unmade, written on what seems like a breezy, pleasant day at Sisters Beach, Tasmania – not that I’ve had a chance to step outside just yet, and as I prepare to hit publish, sunset now isn’t that far away.
We’re now in week three of Unmade, and we’re up to 980 signups. Please do invite a friend or colleague to join us as we head towards the four figure club, and I begin to think about switching on the paid tier.
There’s no musical writing soundtrack today because I’ve been streaming the Senate inquiry into media diversity all day.
The morning session was frustrating. Over the last fortnight or so I’ve been experimenting with a live transcription app called Otter. Opened up on my iPad next to the speaker on my monitor, it’s not always accurate. Here’s a sample of what it tells me Sky News Australia’s CEO Paul Whittaker had to say this morning: “Users are afforded the opportunity to address concerns or challenge the notification in advance of any boobs.” I’m pretty sure he did not say that.
I joined ACMA about a decade ago to lead investigations. I quickly realised there was organisational discomfort in my rather enthusiastic approach to calling big companies to account. Shifted to trying develop policy with all the convergence talk but discovered that anything that impinged on the big social media players was out of bounds (keeping them nice for natsec backdoor access). So glad I got out of there with my soul uncrushed.
That’s an interesting point, MC. I wonder with any form of co-regulation whether regulatory capture becomes inevitable after a while?
Industry capture can be inevitable from the outset if the policy design is willfully blind to the dynamics of power and influence. When industry people know they just need to make a call to an Exec in a regulator to stop or blunt a particular action being taken then…what gets me is that regulators are often less inept and more corrupt- but its a very subtle corruption in most cases.