Media diversity will be reduced by the Fairfax-Nine Network merger, says former prime minister Paul Keating, calling it an "exceptionally bad development."
The ex-Labor leader says allowing the merger will mean a dramatic drop in diversity of news and opinion within Australia.
"If in the announced arrangement, Channel Nine has a majority of the stock, Channel Nine will run the editorial policy," Mr Keating said in a statement on Thursday.
He said that for 50 years, Channel Nine had "displayed the opportunism and ethics of an alley cat."
Mr Keating said the government's 2017 law changes allowing greater concentration of media ownership had led to a "media free-for-all".
"On competition grounds and that of the imperative of local diversity, the competition commissioner should put this proposal under high scrutiny," he said.
"Through various changes of ownership, no one has lanced the carbuncle at the centre of Nine's approach to news management.
"And, as sure as night follows day, that pus will inevitably leak into Fairfax."
Mr Keating derided the enabling legislation as "disgraceful".
"Why would you let a television station own the principal newspaper masthead?" he said on the ABC on Thursday night.
He also lambasted Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for welcoming the merger.
"He's the author of the damn thing," Mr Keating said.
Source: SBS News
