What’s the scoop on news?

A new online survey from Federal Parliament is asking Australians, including Moorabool residents, for their thoughts on news access in regional, rural, and remote areas.

The ‘Australia’s Regional Newspapers’ survey is part of a federal parliamentary inquiry into regional newspapers, with concerns that local news production has decreased in recent years.

Chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications and the Arts, Dr Anne Webster MP, asked regional Australians to take part in the survey and have their say.

“Over the past ten years, news outlets in rural, regional and remote communities have closed their doors, which has resulted in a substantial reduction of articles covering local issues,” Dr Webster said.

The Moorabool News editor Helen Tatchell said there was a reason why some news outlets had closed.

“It must be made clear that many of those that closed are heavily linked to the big players, Murdoch’s News Limited publications and Australian Community Media (ACM). It’s all about the dollar, not community for them,” she said.

“To rub salt into the wound, the federal government then funded some of these publications to open again for two years. A report in The Guardian said, ‘ACM was awarded more than $10m to continue publishing more than 100 regional newspapers through the covid pandemic, but even before the Public Interest News Gathering (PING) grant deed was signed it was closing or scaling back titles.’,” Ms Tatchell said.

To read the full story – Simply click on the following link

https://issuu.com/themooraboolnews/docs/mn_2022-01-25/3

in the 25 January 2022 edition
OR
pick up a paper around your town.