The Australian OpEd: Stephen Conroy's media circus is an exercise in revenge

THE recent announcement by Broadband and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy of an independent inquiry into Australia's print media raises many questions.

 If an inquiry is needed, why is it confined to the print media as opposed to many other forms of media including free-to-air television, pay-TV, radio and the booming online sector?

Could it be because this is as close as you can come to having an inquiry into News Limited without expressly stating that you are targeting that company? A large share of the print media in Australia is owned by News, whereas its interests in sectors outside print media are relatively limited (certainly compared with News Corporation's main overseas markets). How will the restriction to print media (and we are told "online publications") work in practice? In other words, what is included in the scope of this inquiry?

Will the inquiry cover the sites of, for example, Sky News or the Nine Network, each of which has text news stories as well as multimedia content? Indeed, the mix of content on these sites is pretty hard to distinguish from the mix on sites run by News Limited, Fairfax and other print media. That is convergence at work.

If not, how can this inquiry be justified from a competitive neutrality point of view? Why would it make sense to have, for example, a complaints mechanism that deals with an online-only text story on the site of TheAge.com.au but would not deal with a similar story on the Sky News site?

What is the conduct to which this inquiry is directed? The fact it is headed by a lawyer, former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein QC, suggests it is designed to look at whether there has been misconduct by newspapers, which are not adequately regulated.

Is there any evidence of such misconduct having occurred in Australia? Certainly there has been a phone hacking scandal in Britain, but why would that be sufficient to justify an inquiry in Australia in the absence of credible allegations here?

Yet another question suggests itself. Conroy says this inquiry will deal with the impact of technological change; that is, migration to digital and online platforms on the business model of newspapers. But why is this necessary when he already has an inquiry to consider these issues: the convergence review announced in December last year and due to report next year.

The terms of reference for that review state, correctly, that media and communications regulation needs to be reconsidered because convergence and the growth of the internet are challenging traditional media business models.

The business model most squarely challenged is the traditional newspaper.

Fewer people are reading and buying newspapers. Figures released last month showed the total weekly circulation for Australia's main metropolitan and regional newspapers was down 4.2 per cent in a year, from about 20.4 million copies to 19.5 million.

This is a long-term trend. In the 10 years to 2009, total annual newspaper sales in Australia fell steadily, from about 1.04 billion to about 990 million.

The fact fewer people are buying and reading newspapers is only one part of the problem.

The other is that the newspapers' classified advertising revenues, which cross-subsidise journalism, have largely been lost to specialist providers such as Seek in recruitment and realestate.com. au in property. It is no wonder that Fairfax Media's results, announced last month, contained the statement, "Fairfax Media is aggressively responding to structural changes in the media landscape." Newspaper companies' management teams in Australia and across the world are working frantically to see if they can reshape their businesses to find a sustainable new model.

There is much talk about distributing newspapers on iPads but the challenge is whether customers will pay for what they have been getting for free.

Newspapers have a commercial interest in surviving but there is a public interest, too. In democracies newspapers have long had an important role to inform citizens, to foster debate and critique policy proposals. If newspapers disappear and nothing replaces them there is a risk citizens will be less well informed, and our democracy will suffer.

If you wanted to maximise the survival chances of Australian papers, why would you distract them by requiring them to front up to a second inquiry with terms of reference that significantly duplicate the work of the convergence review?

In reality, despite Conroy's rhetoric, this review is not about convergence or new business models.

Labor and the Greens have complained long and loud about the coverage they receive from the News Limited papers. This inquiry is an exercise in retaliation, designed to lead to the imposition of new regulatory burdens on News Limited papers, with those operated by other companies to suffer collateral damage.

It is a political exercise pure and simple. For anyone who cares about the role of newspapers in our democracy, this new inquiry is the last thing we need. It should be cancelled immediately.

Paul Fletcher is a federal Liberal MP.