News Corp newspapers have never been as aggressive in asserting their editorial line as they are now in Australia, ABC managing director Mark Scott has said.



The strident editorial stance of some of the mastheads in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire had serious implications for "public debate and the contest of ideas" as they headed towards an almost total print monopoly in a "winner takes all" media battle, the public broadcasting chief said on Tuesday evening.

Giving a lecture at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Advancing Journalism, Scott said despite the proliferation of smaller players it was still the mainstream media organisations that set the news agenda, and once Fairfax “retreated” from print, News Corp would be the only choice for the reading public in many cities.

“Fairfax is on the road to becoming a digital media company, migrating its traditional broadsheets through a tabloid format while actively discussing the prospect that the day may come where they will not publish them in newsprint at all, certainly not every day of the week”, Scott said.

“Given the aggressive editorial positioning of some of their mastheads and their willingness to adopt and pursue an editorial position, an ideological position and a market segmentation, you could argue that News Corporation newspapers have never been more assertive in exercising media power,” Scott said in his address, titled New Journalism for a New Public.

“The reason it feels like the media battle is being waged as though it’s winner takes all is because that’s exactly what it is.”

News Corp titles, particularly The Australian, have repeatedly attacked media rivals Fairfax Media and the ABC, as well as political foes.

The Australian has called for Scott to resign on numerous occasions and has repeatedly accused the ABC of leftwing bias. The paper is campaigning to have Media Watch presenter Paul Barry sacked for what they say is bias against News Corp.

The paper also regularly attacks rival newspaper company Fairfax Media, recently calling senior Australian Financial Review Fairfax journalist Neil Chenoweth “deranged” and editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury “incompetent”.

News Corp is already a monopoly provider in Brisbane, Adelaide and Hobart and would move to an 80% share of the market if Fairfax stopped printing the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age on weekdays, Scott said.

“People will draw their own conclusions about what this means for public debate and the contest of ideas,” he said. “It might be that all the new arrivals and strong voices find a place of agenda-setting and influence – new central players in the media ecosystem. “

Scott said a range of influential voices was essential to ensure a fair and open media, and he pointed to similar comments made by Rupert Murdoch in 1967. “Freedom of the press mustn’t be one-sided just for a publisher to speak as he pleases, to try and bully the community,” Murdoch said then.

Scott said the return of Rupert’s eldest son Lachlan Murdoch, who was appointed co-chairman of News Corp last week, to run the Murdoch empire was a significant development and the world was watching how he would exercise his power.

“The return of Lachlan Murdoch to his position of power in the family business was clearly a significant news story, not just for his company but for our society. We will all watch to see how he wants to exercise that power."

Scott defended the role of the ABC in the media landscape. He said while the commercial TV networks chased celebrity, crime and sport, the ABC offered a more sober diet of national and international news, and covered regional and rural issues which the commercials had all but abandoned.

He rejected accusations of bias, saying the ABC remained the most trusted source of news and the great majority of Australians did not see it as biased.

“We are concerned about any suggestions of bias at the ABC, but as I’ve said before — I feel that we are nowhere near as bad as our critics make out and not always as good as we would like to be,” he said.

Scott ruffled feathers within News Corp when he gave the AN Smith lecture five years ago, by implying Rupert Murdoch was leading an empire in decline as newspapers became less profitable.

Speaking of News Corp’s move to paywalls, Scott said then: "It strikes me as a classic play of old empire, of empire in decline. Believing that because you once controlled the world you can continue to do so, because you once set the rules, you can do so again. Acting on the assumption that you still have the power that befits the Emperor."

On Tuesday Scott also referred to the future of a struggling Channel 10. He said one of the sweeping and dramatic changes of the past five years had been speculation about whether the market could sustain three free-to-air television networks.

The other significant change had been the arrival of new competitors, including the Guardian, BuzzFeed and the Daily Mail.

“I expect that we’ll see in the Australian market what’s happened in the US and the UK — market segmentation in news based around specific political and ideological perspectives. As Fox News has shown in the US, it’s a way to make very significant money while others around are struggling,” he said.