ACMA to face govt review
Dept of Communications will reportedly turn the spotlight on the media watchdog, with a review of its functions in a changing landscape.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under News
The government is yet to deliver on media reforms but is set see a shake-up to media watchdog The Australian Communications and Media Authority.
The Australian Financial Review reports the government wants to change the culture and certain roles of the organisation as it faces profound, ongoing shifts to the media landscape due to the internet.
According to the article the review will call for submissions on what a “future-focused communications regulator should look like” and asks respondents to rate the ACMA’s performance, efficiency, whether it has “functions that could be better performed elsewhere” and how it should be funded.
ACMA CEO Chris Chapman steps down at the end of this year after 10 years in the role, with possible candidates to emerge from the review process.
ACMA’s 440 staff may also be reduced by the review.
Holding Redlich media law partner Ian Robertson said, “It is to be hoped that the review will result in a new regulator better attuned to the needs of the Australian public interest and media industry in the 21st century.”
Matt Deaner, CEO of Screen Producers Australia, said: “It is important that Australians have an independent media regulator that is both empowered and well resourced to investigate and as appropriate tackle the complex array of media and communications issues affecting the market for and delivery of Australian screen content.”
8 Responses
Hmmmm…
This, along with the FTA Code of Practice changes simply means that there will be little to **no** requirements (legal or otherwise) for the networks to give us truth or facts.
While the ABC is facing more and more choking of its freedom of press and its ability to present actual news and truth.
Anyone else seeing a pattern here? Disturbing, don’t you think?
This govt just doesn’t want Australians to have an independent and objective media.
They want Australia to be more like North Korea where the only media is controlled by their ‘dear leader’.
I once had some respect for Turnbull – but not anymore.
“I once had some respect for Turnbull – but not anymore.”
That seems a common theme. By all accounts & evidence the guy is genuinely intelligent & quite knowledgeable, but the more anyone sees of him the less they like & trust him…
Well, a lot of us have been calling for changes to be made to ACMA for some time. However, I don’t think this is what we had in mind. I’m guessing that they’re going to have their limp lettuce leaf (aka “The Punisher”) taken away from them.
Well, you can probably bet it won’t be split back up into the separate organisations it should rightly be – one for setting and arbitrating media content standards, and another for technical regulation & licencing.
It would seem the current government & friends are intent on putting the boot firmly into the corpse of the previous Convergence Review. I await the actual release of the issues paper later today…
This picture of Malcom Turnbull reminds me of evil Vic from Glitch
The current Federal Government’s view of the media has lost the plot as if they are living in a time warp from the 1940s. They don’t understand that the people set the agenda via a variety of media platforms beyond free to air TV and are far more aware of how government must never be allowed to create propaganda or take control. What the Abbott government is doing to the ABC is a disgusting act to grab more control over what they believe the public needs to hear. They don’t understand how the mainstream public does not like or agree with much of what they are doing. Social networking and shows like Q&A shine a big bright light on the Abbott government, exposing their ugly features.
Oh great – it’s already been gutted and crippled by successive governments, and in many cases relegated to nothing more than a technical rubber stamp to the whims of the communications minister. And now they want to ‘shake it up’ to ‘change the culture’?