Media industries are the communication life lines for our democracy and culture.

We need to keep control of at least 53% of every media company. We don't want a Rupert Murdoch putting pressure on news editors for news coverage, or pressure on politicians for favours. We need a diverse media ownership.

TV3 would have gone to the wall if CanWest had not stepped in and bought it in 1989. 

That would have meant less not more diversity of content. There would have been no edgy shows like Outrageous Fortune or bro'Town. There would be no healthy competition between television journalists working for TV1 and TV3 news and current affairs.

It would also have been bad for producers, because they would have been at the mercy of single state channel  commissioners. As it stands we have a lot more of NZ On Air because TV3 and even Prime can show local content.

The new concentration of media ownership ultimately benefits the public

In order to stay in business media companies have to respond to audience and user needs. If they do not supply popular and useful content to readers, listeners, viewers they will not attract advertising and will go to the wall. The public ultimately benefits because successful media companies please their audiences and customers to survive. Paul Holmes summed it up. 'Media ratings represent democracy for audiences''.

There is always a 'firewall' between media owners (papers, television, radio) and journalists.

Journalists would rather go to jail than be told what to write. It is hogwash to say that people like Murdoch can dictate the news.

What we need are better media critics and commentators. New Zealand lacks gritty, well-informed media criticism.

About the only places to go these days are National Radio Media Watch and bloggers like Russell Brown's Public Address.

Compare this with the riches of commentary in larger more wealthy nations. Check out the UK broadsheet newspapers. Check out the quality think tank research and commentary in the USA.

Good information and debate are the rationales behind setting up Mediascape.

Global ownership of our media shifts focus from our local issues to the concerns of America and other powerful nations.

When these companies have media synergy (owning companies across newspapers, publishers, television companies and search engines) this means they can use media to promote similar ideas, products, celebrities and politics. As media scholar Herbert Altschull put it 'The content of the press is directly correlated with the interests of those who finance the press.'