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COMMENT

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has drawn the personal ire of Rupert Murdoch. Photo: Christopher Pearce

Political history has shown that picking a fight with Rupert Murdoch can be career suicide.

Thus the media industry was awash with theories on why Malcolm Turnbull has jumped into the boxing ring with Rupert Murdoch over changes to media ownership laws. Chief among them is that it will ultimately do more damage to Tony Abbott.

Another theory around Turnbull's motivation is that he is under pressure to do something within his media and telecommunications portfolio beyond increasing the price of stamps and overseeing changes to the National Broadband Network.

It would be a lot more palatable to think that Turnbull is attempting to drag media legislation into the 21st century.

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Changing the antiquated media ownership laws in Australia is more about extending the survival of the big incumbent players than it is about giving them carte blanche to dominate or earn mega profits. There are some traditionalists in federal politics that are still operating in a bygone era. The reality is that while print media is dominated by Murdoch's News Corp the profitability of all print assets in Australia is commercially challenged.

The television networks are under huge pressure from fragmenting audiences, most recently from the introduction of streaming services like Netflix and locally grown defensive plays like Presto and Stan.

The returns from print assets have been decimated by the internet and more recently by giant online aggregators like Google and Facebook.

See the original post here:
Rupert Murdoch and Malcolm Turnbull in media prize fight