A surprisingly bi-partisan op-ed from Paul Howes in the Sunday Tele today in which he falls into line with my many arguments on the subject:
Everyone is talking about Gina. Not since she took on her stepmother for control of her late father's fortune has she loomed so large in Australia...But I don't think that Gina Rinehart controlling Fairfax, or Channel 10, is the portender of doom that many believe it to be.
While I'm staunchly Labor, I don't believe that the government or the community as a whole has the right to stop Gina from taking control of newspapers or other media outlets.
After all, from William Randolph Hearst, to the owners of this paper - the Murdoch family - and indeed the original Fairfax family, rich individuals controlling large media outlets is nothing new.
So Gina controlling Fairfax, or Ten, doesn't unduly concern me. That's the free market, right? That's how capitalism works. If Rinehart wants to spend some of her $30,000,000,000 on dying old media companies, well, she's welcome to give it a go...
In the end, Gina Rinehart can own all the media she likes. She can buy up every last newspaper and TV station for all I care.
Because surviving as a media outlet into the future - where anyone can make, disseminate and find news at the click of the button - is going to take great skill as a media proprietor.
And as a media proprietor, I rather suspect Gina Rinehart will make a great miner.
