Welcome to the world of Nineteen Eighty Four: The U.K. scandal and Australia

What of Australia? We are assured that none of the above problems could happen here. But organisational culture runs across national boundaries. If problems happen in one country, it is likely that they will occur elsewhere. How would we know, until problems surfaced? It is in the media’s interest to keep everything cozy within the media family and keep the public ignorant.

A media enquiry would be an excellent idea. This is what it should look at:

• Who controls what media in Australia? And this means the whole media, newspapers, radio, and TV.
• What rules are there about promoting various causes on TV? What rules are there about advertisements? What would an independent audit show about how many minutes of ads are actually shown? Recent discussion in The Sydney Morning Herald suggests that the “guidelines” are being routinely abused, and always in a direction calculated to increase profits.
• What safeguards are there to make sure that people’s privacy is not invaded by journalists who act merely for the supposed titillation of the public?
• What safeguards are there to make ABC and SBS accountable to the public and not captive to the wealthy and powerful?
• How can we make it easier for people to complain, especially when their privacy is assaulted by powerful media interests? The complaints procedures we have now are ludicrous, and favor big money and powerful media interests. Complaints must be made in writing, and so on and so on; with so much rigmarole that any sensible person with a complaint feels it’s no use complaining at all.
• What more can be done to ensure that ordinary people’s voices can be heard, and not subjected to the will of the wealthy and powerful?

As I write, politicians and the public are debating an enquiry. Tony Abbott says that the media do a good job. Yes, a good job in frantically defending their own interests and riding roughshod over personal liberties when it suits them. In a useful piece, Michael Gawenda raises many real issues and asks what are the codes of conduct for Today Tonight and A Current Affair. The politicians say we don’t need an enquiry, and media moguls say no, no, no. But they would say that, wouldn’t they?

We shudder at tales of the East German Stasi spying on people and getting children to report on parents. The same happened in Orwell’s nightmare world. Are we confident that none of this could happen here, given what we know so far - let alone what may well be revealed in coming months? I’m not.

Let’s keep demanding an inquiry. It’s simple really. Do you trust politicians to tell the truth? Do you believe what you see on TV and read in the papers? Do you think we could improve things by setting up an independent regulator? It’s well worth getting this right. We all rely on the media to tell us what’s going on. What hope is there for rational decision-making if politicians, the press and even the police are in bed together?