Mass media mergers, more lies on the way
Analysis of the proposed merger between Fairfax and CanWest NZ.
Reports that newspaper giant Fairfax is considering the purchase of CanWest Media’s radio and tv holdings in New Zealand is yet another example of the consolidation of all mass media into a handful of multinational corporations. Such corporations have little interest in creating a ‘public sphere’ of debate and discussion through their media channels. Rather, they seek only to maximize their profit margin by selling audiences to advertisers through ever more sensationalised reporting.
Fairfax owns nine daily NZ newspapers including The Dominion Post and The Press (Christchurch) newspapers, over 60 community newspapers and a string of popular monthly magazines including FHM, New Zealand Gardener and Cuisine. It is an Australian company that has significant control over the major markets there, including ownership of the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age (Melbourne) and The Australian Financial Review. At the end of 2006, Fairfax further expanded its empire and diminished the diversity of voices in the Australian media through its takeover of the Rural Press that operated over 170 regional titles and printing operations in all States of Australia and the ACT.
CanWest’s New Zealand operation, the potential new acquisition for Fairfax, is part of the global CanWest empire, a Canadian multinational. The operation in Aotearoa is called MediaWorks and the major holdings include TV3 and TV4. In addition, it owns RadioWorks, a network of over 140 frequencies throughout New Zealand, including 6 Network Brands – The Edge, Kiwi, The Rock, Solid Gold, Radio Live and Radio Pacific. RadioWorks also operates 21 live and local stations broadcasting under the More FM brand and 6 local stations broadcasting as The Breeze.
One corporation will own one-half of all New Zealand mass media, if this merger is successful. This horizontal ownership i.e. the ownership of more than one type of media (tv, radio, print) has expanded exponentially as a result of sweeping deregulation throughout the US, Canada, Australia and NZ in the past twenty years.
The implications of continuing media concentration are dire. The diversity of opinions and voices is severely limited and the content and focus are utterly centralised. Perhaps most importantly, the media further usurps the ability not just to report on issues, but to actually define what the issues that we as a society will address.
As global mergers and takeovers continue, media corporations are increasingly incorporated with weapons manufacturers, oil and chemical companies or mining syndicates. Such is the case with NBC in the United States, which is owned by General Electric, producers of nuclear submarines.
As TVNZ clearly demonstrates Government protection of local ownership is not the answer. The only answer is the creation of media by the people and for the people. We must take responsibility for telling our truths and exposing their lies.
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Comments
Re: Mass media mergers, more lies on the way
the documentary whose news was great and its very interesting reading about corporate control over the media. How can you find out who owns what when it's not listed on their website?
also, do you have a copy of whose news on indymedia because I'd like to show it to friends if you don't mind (with full credit given to auckland imc ofcourse)
Re: Mass media mergers, more lies on the way
The best source of information on NZ media ownership is work done by Bill Rosenberg. There is a report at
http://canterbury.cyberplace.org.nz/community/CAFCA/publications/Miscell...
But be aware that things in the media game change pretty quickly. This report was done before Murdoch sold his INL holdings (the Dom Post, etc) to Fairfax. There may be other mergers that have taken place in the last two years.
Re: Mass media mergers, more lies on the way
I find www.scoop.co.nz a better read than www.stuff.co.nz Fairfax's internet site.
Re: Mass media mergers, more lies on the way
Red Tape and Rhetoric. 28:6:4 by S Trontium.
News media controlled by the thoughts of one man.
RKO’s Citizen Kane, one man controlling all those papers in the 1930’s, papers, peoples access to information, monitored biased and edited/altered. (see film ‘RKO 281’)
New Zealand media now, two heads in control of all NZ’s papers (except a South Island regional, and the few minorities struggling for the majority). The Herald, golden age gone, now a different era in control, the free ranks weaned to a lackey few, toeing the editorial line. The Herald, running an article on Anti-Globalisation protesters, with reactionary precision. A picture of jihad-like extremists, to keep the reactionaries minions ('nat' and 'act' supporters) terrorised, with a caption worded to disenchant the proletariat (the revolutions minions, 'labour'and 'green' supporters), “outnumbered by journalists” what a joke, “happy to chant and dance” - like natives performing for their colonial overlords… then we read, try to read, the Independent/ Reuters/ Herald script, searching for the words that will fire us to hope and action, only to be disenchanted once again as our brain eager for the truth is bogged down with pop news, filler, flotsam, candy floss, telling us our uninspiring leaders have done and doing once again what they always have done, failing us, fucking around, red tape and rhetoric. Only till the seventh paragraph do we find something worth knowing, (and even then it’s a negative) - ‘Bush describes “The spread of freedom throughout the broader Middle East” as “the imperative of our age.” Shouldn’t it be ’The long overdue attainment of true [for what does freedom mean to them.., what does freedom mean to us?] -freedom throughout the broad World!’ What of those poor people of Asia, Africa and the America’s who could not even comprehend the words held by the Statue of Liberty [Dead Kennedy’s Bedtime for Democracy] for doing so would go against their whole existence, would make their lives they live now seem a nightmare, Sudan, Burma, Zapatista, not to mention our living treasures of tribes unchanged for centuries till this day of corporate power hold sway… Living treasures fast disappearing through the same greedy economics that disappear our endangered plants animals and ecosystems - that is the imperative of our age, to address the great crime of ___-cide seen inflicted on this our Mother Earth and her peoples over the last two centuries as the ‘leaders’ unleashed the Machine in an explosive evolution of Westernism, a fraction of the Worlds surface/cultures/people, engulfing the body beautiful with axes, barbed wire, gunpowder and concrete - [I digress, lost in fury for the wonder we see less and less (others may find issue on what was said next, War, this has all been said before - what about all the words the NGOs and others of the freedom fight continually beat against the reactionaries brick wall)]
The Herald, the self-censored press machine, hiding among the flotsam the one sentence that should be on everyone’s mind - “…but did not come up with the hoped for breakthrough on forgiving debt for the worlds poorest countries.” Peoples kept enslaved through the economic mismanagement - or in some cases, well managed - ways in which to rob the people, like the Jacquerie of 1358 France, working dead hard on the land that was once theirs, creating produce the majority of which feeds the rich. This evil of the feudal system re-formed by 1700’s bankers emersed in the pyramid scheme (this scheme of things continuing today as our leaders come from those emersed in the echelon quarters of the Babylon Machine - a mindset/culture/body of thought containing little if none of the feeling of true Earth we have revered for the majority of our self-awareness)
“Debt relief, which NGOs and aids groups were hoping.” And I think of our own (Western) 30-year shacklement to the merchants mortgage yoke for the privilege of buying land and housing that were once eternally ours, again the peasant Jacquerie of 1300’s Europe.
The Herald, giving us a little knowledge, keeping us out of context, editing away the real meaning of things. Instead of saying “Iraq’s sovereign obligations” will be cleared, they should be saying Iraq’s debt ! - that they will not relieve “the tired the poor the struggling masses”, yet they will relieve a country that is set to make millions. Why is that? Is it so the millions will be available to those other than those now indebted, available to those for which the war had reason, this Global Machine that so many freedom loving people are compelled to fight against, to bang their head against, to push shit up hill against. What is the answer to these questions we do not know?
The Herald; “Chirac said France favoured about a 50% debt forgiveness, while US officials have indicated they would prefer numbers closer to 90%”. How much time, talk and energy, did they give to this, compared to that given the poor countries debt, to that given Kyoto, to that given the Awa and the Marsh Arabs and the other indigenous people/endangered eco systems.
Only after reading and wondering where the real words were did I see the `big print`, the small run tucked in the corner, it was reactionaries writing about the revolution for the masses, history being rewritten before it’s a day old, they shamefacedly say of the anti-globalisation movement; “An aging, toothless tiger, blah blah blah, content to spend their time chanting, dancing and engaging in soil purification rituals”.., fucking hippies they may as well have said. YEAH! Viva the revolution
Viva the purification of our soil!