There was an interesting comment at the end of the article, which goes to what I noted on another thread - the desire of those on the Left to stifle public discussion.

"Whichever way the corporates jump, the activists have answers that can be directly linked to their ideological position - look after the public; don't let the poor unwary citizen be subjected to having to buy news that is not really news. At least not news as they see it.

The problem is, that if you invite the public to contribute they will most likely tell you what you don't want to hear.

So it's best to keep the debate at elite level where the average citizen is less likely to go poking around actually telling the inquiry's panelists and conveners what they think"

Those powerful women who now run the ALP through Emily's List call this "framing the debate". The rest of us call it dishonest and repressive.

This is a lazy piece. It misrepresents a number of people's positions by conflating them to suit the author's rather smug depiction of two warring, out of touch groups. But to focus particularly on my own position, I decidedly don't support forced government regulation, as is made clear in my submission. I do support meaningful industry self regulation, with statutory incentives. The comment I made about editors being reigned in was referring to News Limited editors not being reigned in by management for failure to adhere to that company's own proclaimed standards. It was a comment on corporate culture. While I support Martin Hirst's right to appear (and thought the attacks on him in the wake of his appearance particularly silly) i disagree with him on many things. In particular, I am much more optimistic than him about the democratizing impact of new media.. Lastly, the focus of a great deal of my work, both in journalism and elsewhere, is to talk about ways journalists might better engage the public and work to "citizens' agendas". This is referred to in my submission, in the journalism I have published in A number of places, in my work in the university sector and in my most recent book, a copy of which was given to the inquiry at Finkelstein's request. To suggest that my position as an academic means I have contempt for the public is to completely misrepresent the focus of my work, including my core motivation for founding new research projects after 30 years in journalism.

'On one side is the elite left-of-centre academic/government-funded activist team.'

At least the right funds its own lies. The left is funded by the tax payer. Very few on the left are willing to fund their own lies and dogmas. Our National Broadcasters are a disgrace in their selective misleading and bias coverage of politics.

runner/antiseptic,

This isn't about debate - it's about stifling debate. It's about silencing criticism of the worst government since Whitlam.

Fairfax blindly supports a government the public sees as dishonest and incompetent. A government without morals that is willing to do whatever it takes to stay in power. Then they wonder why their sales are falling through the floor? I think SMH sales fell 7% last quarter alone!

These people are too studpid and too ideologically driven to see that the public don't buy it. They think they are the elite out ahead of the great unwashed but the reality is much closer to the maxim that you can fool some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time. And people aren't fooled by this lot.

I'm not sure if Abbott will win with the same majority as Fraser beat Whitlam in 1975 but after another 2 year of this government anything is possible.

This article appears to not display properly. Content is duplicated at what appears to be the end of the first page of a three page article. I am not sure that after having clicked 'all', I have in fact got all.

I post this at this late stage because this article has, perhaps, been referenced by Arjenne Plaizier's article posted today,Friday, 16 December 2011, 'The carbon tax debate on Twitter'.