RPG short answer, Newscorp own 70% of the Australian media, do you call that balance.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-07-26/murdoch-s-influence-wanes-as-cameron-slams-downing-street-door.html
I remain amused and a bit baffled by the pretense this issue is not about Australia.
And the lifting the carpet and sweeping the whole thing under a very big carpet.
Laying claims it is about phone hacking, and only in England.
This link is one of 20 I have posted, for the most part from Great Britain and America.
A long read but haveing done just that read the lot ,IT describes both Labor and Conservatives, lets say seeking advice, from this mob.
Now rest easy, yes right now Murdock is very much trying to, lets say Socially Engineer, Australian politics and policy's.
Few honest, not every one is, people can not see he currently is the tail wagging the Conservative dog here.
He has wagged the ALP dog too.
What purpose Democracy if one mans toy can buy it ?
Great Britain, the paper the link leads to says, is concerned about how much Murdock owns.
Yet he owns 80% more in Australia, than the percentage he owns there.
Only the blind would not see for America and Briton this has just begun, Australia can not refuse to see it has privacy only as part of a truly developing explosion of evidence.
That evidence will make some comments burn at a future date.
Australia must not cringe from an in depth look at this firm.

Kipp,

Newscorp does not own 70% of the Australian media. Considering that Television is considered to be far more valuable, in which he controls only a small slice, and radio and internet are relatively free of his influence.

However, he does own the newspapers with 70% of the distribution in Australia. This is largely because of good management, his newspapers have become far more popular than the others, and whilst the number of papers has not changed much, his distribution has.

This is typical of Australia and its hatred of the tall poppy syndrome. If he published a little read rag like the Green left weekly, that was read only by a few effete lefties, then supposedly he could be taken seriously?

SM he does publish right wing crap rags Herald Sun, Advertiser, Telegaph and The Liberals The Australian just to mention a few!!

Kipp,

I guess "right wing crap" is anything that does not support your left wing drivel.

kipp, if Australians prefer right wing crap to left wing drivel, then I guess that's the way they like it..

You don't like the message from a medium that Australian's clearly prefer, you shut it down .. I expect to hear that from tinpot little dictatorships but not here

What next .. state ownership of all property?

So when the ALP and Greens, and the Green Indies come whining about the nasty press, give me a break - the Coalition and John Howard suffered endless ridicule at the hands of the media and particularly the ABC where someone called him "an unflushable t*rd".

It seems to be a behavior of the left, the Democrats int he US are the same, they don't understand why the Tea Party started, they blame all manner of things, when it was their policies that were the problem, the waste the spending. To prove they didn't understand, they re-elected Polosi as their party leader.

The government needs to change their policies, or go to the people.

The government's policies stink and the public has turned, and as usual the ALP/Green Indies have to have a scapegoat as they do not believe it could be them, it must be some "agent" stirring up trouble.

no it isn't .. it's them, and they need to take responsibility for their actions, stop behaving like a child who insists they are entitled to whatever they want, (to listen to Senator Conroy, you'd think he owned his part of government)

It's not the fault of the media, and if they carry on this way for the next 2 years, well actually .. fine by me