smaller than they appear

I was not surprised to see someone announce to a book launch this morning that they had eavesdropped on an editorial meeting at a Melbourne newspaper and learned that the newspaper was out to get them.

Newspapers out to get people, by fair means or foul, has got Publisher Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation media empire into the news lately.

Rupert Murdoch is one of my heroes. A crusading editor in the day and bold businessman who innovated markets long established media empires floundered in. If Rupert Murdoch had not campaigned so ardently for so lang for education reform in Australia I might not have one

Rupert Murdoch is a ferocious competitor, and so are his executives. Last August Australian News Limited CEO John Hartigan told he Future Forum of the Newspaper Publishers Association his newspapers are

...moving from setting the agenda every day to owning it all day, every day

Mr Hartigan was talking up his company's move to internet publishing, especially on pads, phones and other mobile platforms. But Jan Rezab, from CandyTech in Czech Republic, told the same forum that articles from The West Australian newspaper, part of Kerry Stokes media group, owned the agenda more. Nearly one million of its online articles a month were shared electronically on Facebook compared with a half million Facebook shares for the most shared News publication, the Herald Sun.

A couple of weeks ago the Australian reported

Two former Supreme Court judges will oversee an internal review of third-party payments at News Limited in Australia as the company addresses concerns raised by the News of the World phone hacking scandal in Britain.

Half of the respondents to the last weekly Essential Research online poll said the federal government should not allow one company to own the majority of Australia's major newspapers. Forty-eight per cent also supported the need for more media regulation, and fifty-one percent expressed rising concern about phone hacking after scandals in England revealed the now closed News of the World UK newspaper had published stories gained from hacking mobile telephone voicemails.

Mass media is, above all, mass entertainment. Newspapers commonly print what their readership want to hear. They are, after all, a business. Right now, newspapers are in the business of surviving the assault on their revenues by digital media. News Limited's grip on the Australian media, and the Australian political agenda, is perhaps not as tight as its opponents imagine, given that millions of Australian Facebook users, at least, show a preference for newspaper articles from News Corporation's competitors.

There will probably be a Parliamentary inquiry into the concentration of media ownership in Australia. There hasn't been one for a while, and the Australian Parliament is quite entitled to inquire into and possibly regulate companies doing business in Australia. But it won't change a thing.

Newspapers run stories, and people complain about them. They always have. Meanwhile, only ten percent of people believe what they read in the newspapers anyway. The most believable media by far, according to media academics, is broadcast media. Fourteen percent of people believe what they see or hear on radio and TV.

Hardly a ringing endorsement of either the press or its critics who accuse the media of unduly influencing public affairs.

It is a great shame we are stuck debating the extent to which media should be regulated, and not the limits of free speech.