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fake brush up the aside .... ?

Coonan rejects Murdoch's media
policy criticisms …..

Communications Minister Helen Coonan
has brushed aside Rupert Murdoch's criticism of the Federal Government's
plans for changes to media laws. 

The News Corporation chairman and
chief executive has suggested the Government should throw out its package
of changes or leave things the way they are until someone with the
political will to make more drastic change emerges.

He has also criticised the
protection given to free-to-air networks.

Senator Coonan says she is
interested in what he has to say, but has defended the Government's
policy.

"There's some current
industry structures, and that's the way in which the current television
industry operates, it's very important that we transition these industry
settings to a new digital setting," she said. 

"And that is why we've
proposed a digital action plan that will enable these kind of settings to
be moved on."
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Gus: Are we witnessing a refined well-rehearsed con-job routine from the
three stooges on media laws or are we being thrown a furphy? Same difference?

Interactive Empire

From the Washington Post
Fox's Digital Empire, Going Up Floor by Floor

By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 22, 2006; Page D01

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/21/AR2006082101620_pf.html|One roof, hundreds of millions of Internet viewers].
In a glass-and-stone building on a leafy side street, media giant News Corp. has consolidated some of the hottest trend-setting properties of the online world.
The third floor is where 300 employees of MySpace.com help some 100 million young people post profiles on the Internet's most popular Web site, creating a prized advertiser demographic. One floor below is the home of AmericanIdol.com, which shares space with FoxSports.com and Fox Mobile Entertainment. On the ground floor are Fox's digital labs, where new ideas are dreamed up, implemented or discarded.
In all, this building of 700 employees is the hub of Fox Interactive Media, the year-old digital division of parent company News Corp., created with last summer's purchase of MySpace. Its job: Figure out a way to make serious money from delivering mobile and Internet content and wring advertising revenue from MySpace. Chief executive Rupert Murdoch has projected that Fox Interactive's revenue will top $660 million by the end of next year
Read more at the Washington Post

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Gus: Ah... the price to pay being a free-roaming starving wolf on YourDemocracy rather than a chained fat dog working for a serious money making-fox outfit... As I was emailing a friend this morning "The empire strikes its enemies, while the Democrats shoot themselves in the foot by navel gazing..."

Bring on the burning flags and the barricades!
There there calm down Gus... You've discarded more brilliant money-making ideas than there are stars in the sky... Is is that your true democratic ideals stop you from kissing the hand of King-Dollar?

secrecy of sources necessary against secret govt abuses

From the ABC

Journalists lose appeal against contempt charges
There has been a setback for two Canberra-based journalists facing contempt charges.

Gerard McManus and Michael Harvey, who work for Melbourne's Herald Sun, were charged after refusing to disclose the identity of their sources for a report on cuts to recommended benefits for war veterans.

The journalists appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing Victoria's County Court chief judge did not have the power to make them give pre-trial evidence.

Today Justice Hollingworth dismissed their appeal, which means the charges stand.

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Gus: towards a more moribund Journalism...

one ball with two pointy ends

From NineMSN

Broadcasters brawl as Foxtel axes AFL
Wednesday Aug 23 20:39 AEST
Foxtel's decision to axe its AFL channel sparked a public slanging match on Wednesday between the pay TV provider and Channel Seven.
It also meant the structure of the league's record $780 million [http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=98715|television rights agreement] remains a mystery, with Foxtel and Seven saying the ball was in the other's court at this stage of their ongoing negotiations.
But the AFL stressed the impasse would have no effect on its agreement, indicating it was up to Seven and Ten to work out how the coverage would work.
Under the deal, Seven and Ten can sub-license up to four games per week to a pay TV operator.
The big initial losers were about 50 staff at the Fox Footy channel, whose working futures are now uncertain, and AFL fans, who will lose their 24-hour service.
Seven and Ten have secured the 2007-11 rights and at the moment, they would have to broadcast all eight games per weekend between them.
That would appear a highly unlikely option.
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Gus: Someone is playing a smart game of hot and cold showers... And do we know who this someone is... ? Eventual agreement massaging from this could be very fascinating... In regard to the intent by the Federal government to implement "new" media laws...