Impact of Media Ownership and Advertising Campaigns on Australian Politics

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Executive summary
In the current scenario, business organizations tried hard for the laws to be removed Due to
the changing pattern of media and apprehensions regarding the increasing influence of social
media giants. Editors would still have the full control over the newspaper and the paper will
retain it special tone as well as target audience with itself. This report discussed five
advertising campaign principles in context to Australian law named as relevance of campaign
in context to government responsibility, fairness, use of Accurate and verifiable facts and
compliance with legal requirements. Freedom of political communication has been implied
by Australia as it does not have any right to free speech. Along with this, there are regulation
in the format and presentation of political advertising but little regulation on content. This
report summarized that there is vulnerability of electoral from getting targeted by advertisers
due to emergence technologies.
Introduction
Australian Government in 2017 abolished age-old cross media ownership law that
prevented any business organization from owning 2 or more platform among T.V. Station,
radio station and Newspaper (Park and Abril, 2016). Due to the changing pattern of media
and apprehensions regarding the increasing influence of social media giants like twitter,
Facebook etc, media companies tried hard for the laws to be removed (Park and Abril, 2016).
Australian Communication and Media authority in Australia is referred to as a regulator
for radio and television. In the context of Print media , it is regulated by Australian Press
Council . In a press release by Michelle Rowland, it has been stated that “Level of media
ownership in Australia is highest in the world”. Broadcasting Services Act 1992 has been
used to control the media ownership. This act has been administered by ACMA (Australian
communication and media authority). . Also in case of rural media , it is dominated by
Australian community Media (Rennhoff and Wilbur, 2011) .In context of foreign
ownership of Australian media, Act 129 of 2006 allowed for changes to the foreign
ownership & cross media with Broadcasting services Amendment(media ownership) Bill.
2006. Australian media is dominated by News Corp and Nine Entertainment, both of them
controls the concentration of media within them.Even Australian Associated press which is
responsible for dissemination of news and selling on other platforms such as Australian
Broadcasting Corporation, owned by Newscorp, Nine and Seven west Media. Even rural
and regional media is in merger with Fairfax Holdings. Australia has only three free to air
network for television which are Nine Network, Ten Network Holding and Seven west
media. If combined license area exceeds seventy five percent of the population of Australia

then a viewer cannot not control television broadcasting license as me mentioned in section
53 of Broadcasting service act 1992.There is also limit in the multiple directorship and
foreign directors in section 55 and section 58 respectively. In Case of Radio media there is
prohibition of more than two license in same license area as menetioned in section 54 of the
act. Cross Media Control is maintained by section 60 of the act and have provisions
regarding various combinations of media among television radio and newspaper.Also there
are some exceptions in these control rules. Australian communication and Media
Authority has right to permit the license holder in any area to provide for second television
broadcasting service. If the area had two commercial television broadcasting license then
ACMA can permit for third service there. The two out of three rule of Broadcasting
Legislation amendment (broadcasting reform) Act 2017 allowed various modifications in
diversity rules as well as media control rules in Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (Michelle
Rowland MP, 2019). These amendments introduced a new regulation that demands local
content provisioning by regional commercial television licenses which comes under the
preview of network having control to more than seventy five percent to Australian
population. These amendments repealed 2 out of 3 rule and seventy five percent audience
reach rule. The rules that are still continue applying market radio rule, one to a market
TV rule and Number of voice rules
Referring to the Article published in The Sydney Morning Herald, the Nine entertainment
company and The merger of Fairfax media and just structured as a merger but technically
speaking it is a takeover in reality as shareholders of fairfax has revived shares of Nine
Entertainment and money in order to give up upon the share of Fairfax and its assets and the
Fairfax brand will cease to exist (Mail Online, 2019). The Fairfax shareholder will have the
49 percent of the shares while that of Nine’s will have 51 percent of shares with them (Duke,
2019). It has also given that the Fairfax have opportunity to contribute three members to the
new board. For the company the deal is termed as “pretty big”. The outcome of the deal will
be the biggest domestic media company in Australia with 6000 staff members and
appreciable as well as strong presence in the field of TV, radio and online media. The
company will get estimated annual revenue of $3 billion and earning of around $483 million.
On comparing various media houses in Australia , it can be mentioned that the 2nd best tv
network is Nine whereas Herald has the privilege of having the large audience segment
among any newspaper in the country .For readers it will not going to affect much (The
Economist, 2018). The Nine’s board has given the Fairfax charter of editorial