ADOS – Attention Deficit …Oh Shiny!

A few weeks ago, Andrew Bolt and others were expressing concern about the ABC being too big. But let’s not talk about that now, because we’ve moved on. There’s no reason why a private individual – or group – can’t own 100% of the media. To quote Mr Turnbull, “Why is there a 75 per cent reach limitation? Why is there a rule that says today that you can’t own print, television and radio in the same market? You could be fair to say that I am very sympathetic about it.”

After all, we have the Internet.

But let’s talk about the VLAD laws. Surely you can’t think that bikies should be allowed to roam free. They’re all criminals you know. So how can you oppose the VLAD laws? It’s like child porn on the Internet. We need restrictions on that. We need to have ways of censoring the Net. To stop illegal downloads and child porn. And pictures of bikies. I hear they use the Internet to communicate. We need ways of censoring the Net.

The ABC too. Well, not censoring it exactly.  We need to find ways to ensure that it’s balanced. It’s very big and that can be a problem if it’s not balanced. And lately its reputation has “been tarnished” according to those at Murdoch Media because it published information before it checked out that it was correct. No, not the information that they repeated from Scott Morrison. He corrected that within a week of being proven wrong, whereas the ABC still haven’t apologised for running a story that may be proved wrong if we ever have an investigation into it.

No, it’s quite simple. In this day and age we have so many sources of information that we don’t need to worry if someone has all the print, televison and radio in one city, because we can all access alternative information on the Internet. Very quickly too, in some places where they have they NBN. And fairly quickly in others. Not so quickly in places that don’t have coverage, but hey, if they wanted to know what was going on, why would they live in such a place?

The Internet is very democratic. Anyone can publish on it. So why is it a problem if when people are listening on their car radio, or turning on the TV or picking up a paper that they only get the view from one company or person? If they don’t like it they can search the Internet for alternative views. But not from those sites we’ve shut down for porn or allowing illegal downloading or advertising Harley Davidsons on eBay. That’s why they were shut down, of course, because these people were doing bad things. If you don’t believe us, just read what the paper said about them.

Another thing that we all should remember is that people who run the media are just like the people who run the government. In some cases, exactly like the people who run the government. As Milan Kundera once said, “The struggle of man against power is…”

Oh, shiny!