Today I write to you on a very serious topic with a largely uninspired title, I apologise, apparently I’m not quippy today. Now, this very serious topic is about media ownership.The issue in Australia is that the majority of our popular media is controlled by very few people, and the majority of that majority is owned by one man. Rupert Murdoch. Anyone unfamiliar with Rupert Murdoch, to put it simply, he is a rich, relatively conservative (with the exception of his stint of allegiance with British Labor PM, Tony Blair) old, white guy who owns a shit tonne of the western world’s media, notably many newspapers, including The Australian and The Telegraph, another fun fact, he is the 91st richest person in the world and his real first name is Keith.
Ok, so the main issue with the media being owned largely by one person is that anything portrayed to us in the media is largely one-sided or biased, and often can be false and only shown to us in order to make a profit, gain a political agenda or simply to reinforce that views and acts by that person are inherently right. Which in the case of good ol’ Keith, in Australian media is relatively true. He is a conservative, and thus has portrayed a largely popular view on Liberal PM, Tony Abbot, as well as Gina Rinehart, who as many of us know, provides funding to the Liberal party, which in turn passes bills which allow for her to profit more from mining. a change from Labor’s mining tax which stinted mining company’s profits, Liberal’s are happily tearing up Australia for a profit (I’m a little biased here), and why? Gina wants them to, and Gina gives them money. Let me also add that as of 2012, Rinehart has owned 18.7% of Fairfax Media Group. Clearly her ownership of that large portion of the media is beneficial to her.
Now to conclude this (hopefully factual and informative) political rant, (yay free media) I shall say this: If the ownership of the media, this beautiful and vast spectrum that we have access to, is owned by very few, with very specific and personal agenda for their own gains, then the media as a resource becomes significantly less helpful and meaningful to the vast majority of media consumers. The media should be created and owned by a large variety of people, and we should educate ourselves to consume media with a conscious mind, because if we don’t, we ultimately are all living in a cycle of ignorance, and putting money into the pockets of old white guys named Keith.
Sam x.
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Sam Does UOW 