Rejection of competition complaints wasn’t what the Australian was hoping for. Plus: Ray Hadley sees the light
A
$1.2m inquiry, which included a fact-finding mission to London for the
expert panel, found this week that the ABC and the SBS were not disrupting News Corp’s business model by
offering free online news and streaming, and the biggest threat was
Facebook and Google. The Australian, which had campaigned hard for the
inquiry, called it “a bitter pill” to swallow.
“It is glaringly obvious the ABC enjoys a competitive advantage over commercial media,” blasted the Oz commentator Mark Day in defiance of the actual evidence in the report by the economist Robert Kerr, the commercial TV lobbyist Julie Flynn and the former ABC TV executive and producer Sandra Levy. “It is gifted a billion dollars a year of your money and doesn’t need to bother about small matters like raising enough revenue to fund its business or deliver a profit to shareholders. But in the world of bureaucratic gobbledygook, this does not mean it has an unfair advantage.”
Ordered by the communications minister, Mitch Fifield, to get Pauline Hanson on side for his media reforms, the competitive neutrality inquiry
was an expensive exercise which even required the panel to hop on a
plane to examine the BBC model of public broadcasting. The comprehensive
rejection of all the complaints from the commercial broadcasters,
Fairfax Media and Rupert Murdoch’s outlets was not the result the
Australian was hoping for and the paper’s headlines didn’t exactly match
the spirit of the report.“It is glaringly obvious the ABC enjoys a competitive advantage over commercial media,” blasted the Oz commentator Mark Day in defiance of the actual evidence in the report by the economist Robert Kerr, the commercial TV lobbyist Julie Flynn and the former ABC TV executive and producer Sandra Levy. “It is gifted a billion dollars a year of your money and doesn’t need to bother about small matters like raising enough revenue to fund its business or deliver a profit to shareholders. But in the world of bureaucratic gobbledygook, this does not mean it has an unfair advantage.”
The Australian’s response to yesterday’s Govt released findings that ABC-SBS online news services DO NOT breech competitive neutrality principles
The ABC, the SBS and Labor welcomed the report. Weekly Beast understands that the ABC is bolstered by the findings and has written to the government in the lead-up to the midyear economic forecast on Monday. The ABC wants the government to reverse its decision to pause indexation in the May budget, a decision which amounted to an $84m cut. The ABC is also asking for assurance that a further $43m targeted grant to support news gathering will be forthcoming, according to sources.
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