The media is owned by only a few people, and these are some of the most powerful people on this earth.

The media will only do a proper job when it is fragmented and has not followed what the big boys upstairs want it to.

there is no such thing as free speech anymore, this is 2007.

I'd be exceptionally wary of Beattie's suggestions. The man has an atrocious record when it comes to FOI.
He's always keen to pose for the camera, or trot out an unimportant yet admirably distracting story (honestly, who gives a toss if the premier's trying to lose weight?) but when it comes to stories critical of government operation, he won't let any information free without one hell of a fight.

This is a very sensible and well thought out article. Media abuse including misinformation and bias is rampant.

You are right about Beattie - as I pointed out in a longer piece I wrote for Quadrant that canvassed this issue. His ideas are interesting, however, although I have my doubts about them because of the potential they have to add yet another layer of regulation to an already overegulated system.

Concentration of media ownership is only one aspect of the issue, in my view. The real problem is that the media is not accountable to anyone - there are no checks and balances, as it were. By the same token, it seeks to make others accountable, and eviscerates people for shortcomings that the 'media' as a body evinces in spades. This process cannot be allowed to go on - it turns good people away from public life, and makes the average punter respond with an entirely reasonable 'well, there's no free speech any more'.

Helen Dale's article is timely, in view of the discussion about media ownership in general, but Realist's comments are beginning to answer "who guards the guards?"
That answer is: "we do"!
The media power that he refers to comes about only because of our lifelong passive acceptance of the "media" in the forms we have come to know.
But we, the consumers, have the ultimate power of scorn and disdain, thus rejection, of poorly performing media.
The attendant financial losses to the owners due to falling readership and audience means that advertisers do not get cost effective returns.
Gone are the old days when readers and audiences had to accept whatever the media chose to present.
Now, with the presence of the newest interactive media in the form of the Internet, wide and sometimes challenging discussion of all news is the norm.
I find that sites such as OLO and Crikey present items in a way that actually invites thought and comment; far better reading than the daily rags, whilst ABC radio and TV news give good coverage of local issues, and SBS is excellent for international stories.
"Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
"Ego cum cura!"

I am unsure if electronic news is liable to solve the problems with our news media. How, after all, does one differentiate between those who are writing simply for the satisfaction of seeing their name in the public zone and those who are willing to work for no remuneration in the hope of - a phrase that had been rendered trite by repetition - making a difference?

In either case, although both are liable for the scorn and criticism that attaches to blogging, the same question remains: what disinterested body exists to ensure the views expressed are not partisan rhetoric allied to specific agenda?

In fact yet another danger in blogging exists: a click through blog streams in this publication will show instances where articles based on valid research and objective opinions have been traduced by those with personal axes to grind.

In these instances the voices of unreason carry the day and subvert even the empiric evidence supplied: making the end result - misinformation - the same as that supplied by unscrupulous journalists.

I think that Ponder is correct. To rely on any specific source for information is naive - perhaps even irresponsible if the source is one which is compatible with our own politics and beliefs. The only way to try to approach an objective or approximately factual opinion is to trawl through a variety of sources; the more disparate the better.

I am idealistic enough to consider this a sad indictment on society as a whole.