By Greg Miller
The tone of the front page article in the Australian of Friday, March 10, was exuberant. It splashed across three-quarters of available space and was supported by colour photos and diagrams. "$4bn pay TV plan world first", read the caption, and the text discussed the interactive possibilities and "hundreds of channels" to be provided by the digitised cable services of a new company, Foxtel.
With such attention, this was obviously an important and newsworthy development. There were even follow up articles on pages 39 and 42, making six in total. And, on every second page from 5 through to 15 was a full-page ad on the arrival of this new company in the form of a giant 10-9-8 ... countdown. Apparently Foxtel will go off in our collective consciousness like a media Hiroshima.
Impressive? But the latter at least is only advertising. And advertising is seldom subtle. Or is it?
The sheer amount of money spent on the ads would be impressive if not for the fact that Foxtel is owned and controlled by Murdoch's News Corporation and by Telecom. Hence News Corp is putting its own funds, together with taxpayers' money, into a newspaper owned by itself.
Given the power of advertising to influence, the only thing really impressive — and possibly the only thing really newsworthy — is the extent to which News Corporation seeks public acceptance of its product. What guarantee do we have that this does not extend to its coverage and portrayal of the entire Foxtel announcement?
We could always look for other opinions in order to assess the real importance of this issue. What about the Advertiser, Adelaide's News-owned newspaper? Here again we see a front-page article, "Pay-TV Giant Eyes 4m Homes", and another in the business section. The pattern is repeated in Murdoch's Sydney tabloid, the Telegraph Mirror, although this time the first article appears on page two.
What about the outlook from Fairfax? Aside from more full page ads — only two this time: too much revenue can't be given to the opposition — we find nothing in the Sydney Morning Herald until the business section. Here there is a smallish article on Foxtel's associate company, Australis, and a larger one on the Foxtel deal itself.
The latter article is reworked and republished on page three of the Age, which gives it some status as a topic of importance to the general public. There is another article in the business section. A piece on BTR Nylex is, however, identified as the prominent business news of the day.
There is not only a disparity in the degree of importance given the Foxtel announcement — depending on whether the newspaper's controlling company has a vested interest. There is also a discrepancy in who the "news" is deemed important to. The Fairfax press sees the Foxtel deal mainly as of interest to the business community, whereas News Corporation sees it as of huge concern to the community at large. The reality probably lies somewhere in between.
Whether the second view is "correct" or not, News Corporation's front-page articles certainly help to promote this view. To what extent are its papers merely reporting on an important issue, and to what extent are they making the issue important?
The blurring of distinctions between "news" and "entertainment" is well known, but this could be seen as a blurring of distinctions between news and advertising. Given the importance of television and the press in mediating our view of the world and in influencing public opinion, this would be a terrifying abuse of power.
The development of the information superhighway will continue to be one of the most important and most featured news stories throughout the remainder of the decade. But the extent to which this is because of its importance to the public, and the extent to which it is because the main investors in the new technology control the media, is something which we may find increasingly difficult to gauge.
The owners of Australia's media are currently jockeying for position over control of Fairfax and Channel Seven even as they campaign to have the media cross-ownership and foreign ownership laws changed. The lead article in the Australian of March 13 was titled "News Ltd chief urges media law overhaul", while an opinion article in the business section carried the heading, "Cross-media ownership change inevitable". Is this genuine reporting, or is it an attempt to influence public opinion and hence government policy on a vitally important issue?