Media regulation, media policies and complete concentration of the media… It’s tricky stuff to get your head around.
That is, until Mr Media himself explains it to you; Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes.
Although I didn’t agree with most of Finkelstein’s argument about publicly funded ‘Press Council’ and its forced extension into the online world, I do happen to strongly support his comment at the Public Media Inquiry in Perth in December of 2011 that was made apparent by said ‘Mr Media’:
“What about then, instead of putting money into a Press Council, I suggest to the government they should fund Media Watch 15 minutes every day instead of every Monday”. – Ray Finkelstein: Public Media Inquiry in Perth
That’s the smartest idea you’ve thought of Mr. Finkelstein.
Which leads me to my next point, media regulation cannot continue to be primarily based upon a singular platform of delivery. Due to convergence removing the technological bases that used to tie content to a single platform, even the most traditional of media have duplicated their content onto online and mobile platforms. Read more here… The Conversation.
Is the answer then a platform-neutral regulation? This proposed recommendation by Flew (T, 2012) explains the intension of this platform-neutral regulation is to avoid inconsistencies manifest under the current scheme, and enable a new classification framework to be more adaptive to changes in technologies, products and services that are arising out of media convergence.
Establishing a new regulatory framework or policy for convergent media not only raises many debates throughout the online, print, government and journalistic world, but the ever growing uncertainty attached to the concept of media and its expansions complicate the framework process further.
In summary, a framework is needed to regulate media across an increasingly convergent world. In my own suggestion, Mr Media should be the policy writer.
erinshanahan 