Amid all the sound and fury generated by Gina Rinehart’s assault on the Fairfax board, the slashing of over 1,900 jobs from The Age, the SM and the AFR and the threat of hundreds if not thousands of jobs being lost at News Limited, it was easy to miss this announcement last week.

For those on the east coast of Australia who may not know the name, Don Voelte is an American who is also the former chief executive of Woodside Petroleum. As CEO of Woodside, Voelte earned a reputation as the brash, unstoppable force behind the decision to put a $40 billion gas hub on the pristine Kimberley coast. He is now the proud  chief executive of Seven West Media, the owner of The West Australian newspaper, the Seven Network, Yahoo!7 and Pacific Publications.

With the media landscape  quaking and proclamations that this was a watershed moment for the industry, it appears that same media is dominated, not by media experts or even “newspaper” people, but by current and former players in the resource sector with zero experience in the media industry.

Gina Rinehart now owns over 18% of the shares in Fairfax – publisher of The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review and 10.6% of shares in the television station Channel Ten and Don Voelte is now boss of Channel 7 and The West Australian newspaper.

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Much has already been written about Rinehart’s suitability as a director of a media company who refuses to respect the editorial independence of those newspapers. Such is her ignorance of the media business that it has been left to the  Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, and shadow minister, Malcolm Turnbull to try and educate Mrs. Rinehart about the commercial imperatives for respecting that independence and  agreeing that her failure to do so could drive the papers into the ground.

For his part, Voelte comes to the top job at Channel 7 and The West Australian with no experience in media. In fact the market was so impressed with his lack of experience that the announcement of his appointment saw the company’s share price fall 27 cents before closing 13.7% lower on a day when the broader market fell 0.4%.

He is on the record as a vocal critic of the resource super profits tax and previously suggested that putting a price on carbon raises issues of sovereign risk for Australian companies. While he is keen to see a nuclear power industry grow in Australia, his views about the independence of the media – particularly his media – is not yet known.

With two such opinionated owners potentially controlling two commercial TV stations, one national newspaper and the leading newspapers for Sydney, Perth  and Melbourne, and the only other commercial competitor, News Limited going through a massive restructuring and retrenching up to ten percent of its editorial staff, there is a very real fear that certain stories will be pushed while the space available for others will all but disappear.

For instance Rinehart has made no secret of her desire to elevate climate sceptics to the same level as peer-reviewed climate scientists in terms of column inches and coverage and her commitment to bring in foreign workers to fast track the roll-out of her mines has been immortalised in her poem entitled Our Future[1]. Voelte has, in his first week in the job, come out swinging over the threat to “free speech”, he sees in the government’s attempt to limit ownership of the news.

But with major players from the resource sector in control of so many mainstream media organisations I believe the greater threat comes from their capacity to keep stories out of the papers and off the news, than comes from their ability to push their own agendas.

In a period of such enormous change, innovation and imagination are vital to the health of any nation, including ours. It could be argued that it is a collective lack of imagination and empathy that has led to the crippled state of affairs in immigration, industry, education, the arts and certainly our energy systems.

That’s why keeping stories out of circulation is so important to preserving the status quo. Storytelling, sharing ideas and possibilities is what makes change possible. We are inspired to act when we see others achieve the goals we want for ourselves and our communities

With the resource sector dominating the news we all read and watch we have to ask where will  we go for inspiration, innovation and information. For instance, where will we get to read about how investment in coal has fallen by 26% in China over the last 12 months? Or that the US has shut down over 100 coal-fired power stations over the last five years?  Where do we get to read stories like this that detail the end of cheap coal or stories like this that show renewable, cheap, accessible power solutions for the poor of India?

While we can appreciate and financially support various independent media sites like New Matilda, RenewEconomy and Crikey, we cannot afford to leave our mainstream media outlets to the whims  of any one sector or family even if they are the only ones rich enough to own it.

[1] Our Future

The globe is sadly groaning with debt, poverty and strife
And billions now are pleading to enjoy a better life
Their hope lies with resources buried deep within the earth
And the enterprise and capital which give each project worth
Is our future threatened with massive debts run up by political hacks
Who dig themselves out by unleashing rampant tax
The end result is sending Australian investment, growth and jobs offshore
This type of direction is harmful to our core
Some envious unthinking people have been conned
To think prosperity is created by waving a magic wand
Through such unfortunate ignorance, too much abuse is hurled
Against miners, workers and related industries who strive to build the world
Develop North Australia, embrace multiculturalism and welcome short term foreign workers to our shores
To benefit from the export of our minerals and ores
The world’s poor need our resources: do not leave them to their fate
Our nation needs special economic zones and wiser government, before it is too late.

Macken Sense is a weekly metabolic breakdown of media and green events by our astute commentator, Julie Macken. Follow Julie Macken on Twitter @juliemacken