Look John, as a working member of the media (Australian Financial Review) I can see where you're coming from but the fairness rating your suggest would have as many problems as the media outlets its supposed to rate.

For example, who decides what is fair or not? What will happen is that the rating process will be captured by arts academics - the only ones with time for this stuff - and will be biased towards the traditional journalist-academic viewpoint. That is, it will reflect soft-left and social activism views. Outlets that are in line with those views will be rated as "fairer" than those which don't echo the concerns of the academic elite.

In any case, although I have some sympathy for Finkelstein's views, the traditional media is already under considerable pressure with its traditional market fragmenting.

Nice idea but forget it.

I agree in principle with the article. If opinion pieces are going to largely replace traditional fact gathering and verification that once was the media, then we need to impose divergent views on the current crop of media corporations.
Before anything was passed by any citizens' committee, we needed at least 2 speakers for, and 2 against? And then allowed the most compelling or cogent speech to fall where it may, or persuade who it would.
It's probably true that Journalists have as wide a range of views as their readership, but are possibly contained in expressing those views by media ownership?
Which as we are now learning, have sought for decades to control politicians and therefore through them, who runs the country and what policies/reforms etc, will ever see the light of day?
It is time for that situation to be entirely reversed and free speech to be returned to media-ship, via Journalists with completely divergent views, being finally unmuzzled by law?
Perhaps what we really do need is an entirely irrevocable bill of human rights, which finally enshrines true freedom of speech? Which would finally fully enable all media personal to speak/write/publish their own minds, rather than the politically inspired versions, allowed by their extremely powerful/rich, Lords and Masters?
Thank the Lord for the Internet and sites just like this one!
Rhrosty.

What a pointless proposal. I don’t need a fairness bureaucracy to tell me that Andrew Bolt is right wing and Philip Adams is left; that the Australian tends to the right and the Melbourne Age to the left; that the ABC is as likely to give climate sceptics a fair hearing as is Green Left Weekly to say nice things to say about Tony Abbott.

Bias and balance are in the eye of the beholder. Should every article on geology and palaeontology be “balanced” with one on new earth creationism and intelligent design? Should trades unions give space in their members’ magazines to the HR Nicholls society? Are even the most extreme opinions entitled to space in the mainstream media in the interests of balance?

I find the assumption that the general public needs to be told when their chosen reading matter is biased sanctimonious and elitist.

I think the fairness debate is really interesting: I agree that there cannot be an institution which prescribes what is fair or not, but I think that human rights should always apply no matter if online of offline. Fairness is to live and let live to a certain extent, but it does not mean that looking away once there is trouble is a good thing to do. And fairness does not depend on education - mostly it is the clever people which have the greatest willpower to manipulate others for their own good simply because they know how to do it. Fairness is a conscious decision people (especially professionals) have to make in their lives.