Quote:
Originally Posted by russellw
A free democracy. Freedom of speech. Novel concepts.
The reality is that we are actually a society where public opinion (and thus votes) are driven in whatever direction the relatively narrow media
ownership chooses to drive it.
It's been getting progressively worse these last two decades and I'm not all that sure that we are that far removed from the 'only tell what we
want you to know' mantra of State owned media organisations with the only obvious differences being that (1) we don't actually always know who is
pulling the strings and what their agenda is; and (2) the fringe elements are still allowed their say even if it to a tiny percentage of the
population who are possibly certifiable anyway.
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Bang on. In 2016 Australia was ranked 4th in the world for media concentration when accounting for all platforms. China ranked 1, surprise surprise
. New Zealand was right up there as well (can't recall the actual rank), which was surprising. Also interesting was that the US was ranked quite low, but after spending some time there I'm not surprised, they have hundreds of channels all driving different views, so at least viewers there have a choice to listen to different narratives and make up their own mind. I can't find the link to that study though
This study indicates we were ranked 3rd in Newspaper ownership in 2011, with a relatively high HHI trend increasing.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/dat...dustry-squeeze