Arguments against a Murdoch Royal Commission are naïve | The Conversation
This letter was published by The Conversation on 7 January 2021
Andrew Podger’s call for a narrow media inquiry behind closed doors may appeal to academics, but it is politically naïve in the extreme. It is simply unrealistic to expect any substantive media reform to occur without the driving force of a royal commission.
Media policy is especially difficult for three main reasons. First, because the most powerful vested interests – chiefly Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation – have extraordinary power to shape public perceptions about any inquiry. This power is turbo-charged when the people cannot watch the inquiry’s proceedings firsthand. We saw this with the Finkelstein Inquiry, whose representations were misrepresented by Murdoch as totalitarian on the scale of Stalin and Mao.
Second, Murdoch has an impressive track record of thugging politicians into cherry-picking the recommendations of any report that suit his bottom line, and junking the rest. The new News Media Bargaining Code is a case in point; Murdoch’s News Corporation is now booking more than A$100 million each year in payments from Facebook and Google, while smaller rivals are left behind.
Third, media policy is diabolically complex. Decades of piecemeal reform have resulted in a weak and disjointed series of laws, regulators, self-regulators and co-regulators. There is no mutually agreed base of evidence from which a government could begin to make decisions. Media reform also requires the balancing of competing values that go to the heart of our democracy. When is a citizen’s right to privacy more important than the rights of media companies to publish their secrets? When should national security be used as an excuse to block freedom of information? These are not questions for the number-crunchers of the Productivity Commission, as Podger suggests, or something for a handful of elites behind closed doors.
This same philosophy gave us the Abbott government’s Financial Systems Inquiry. Its highly credentialled panel of experts, when asked to investigate consumer protection in the banking industry, failed to hear the voices of the people most affected by their abuses. It wasn’t until the Hayne Royal Commission – which was bitterly opposed by not only the finance sector, but the upper crust of financial journalists – finally lifted the lid on rotten behaviour for all to see that substantive change became possible.
An open public inquiry with a broad remit, proper resourcing and a commissioner of unimpeachable integrity can give proprietors, journalists, editors and others the opportunity to each be heard and have their assertions tested in real time. It would have the legitimacy of an open process with daily exposure of its revelations that keep the public informed and engaged throughout. It would serve as a lightning rod for Australians, including former and serving Murdoch employees, to give evidence fearlessly. Since it would be a proper investigation – not a partisan trap of the kind set by Tony Abbott’s royal commissions – it could also test the Murdoch media’s gripes about anti-siphoning laws, social media and allegedly endemic left-wing bias at the ABC. Its recommendations, whatever they are, would carry the force of that legitimacy.
We don’t need another boutique review to be ignored or manipulated. We’ve tried that too many times, and it has delivered us the most concentrated media industry of any democracy on Earth.
– Kevin Rudd, 26th Prime Minister of Australia and Chair, Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission