Status of Media reform, page-8

Reported in The Age by Andrew Tillett just 24 minutes ago.

Media law changes set to pass as government nears deal with Nick Xenophon
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Crossbench senator Nick Xenophon is close to a deal on media reform. Mark Brake
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by Andrew Tillett
The Turnbull government's media reform package chances of passing Parliament this week have received a boost, with Communications Minister Mitch Fifield close to finally striking a deal with key independent senator Nick Xenophon.
The final details are yet to be confirmed but the speculation is Senator Xenophon has secured $30 million over three years to help news organisations hire cadet journalists, with a further $6 million to help independent rural outlets purchase new equipment.
Senator Xenophon and Senator Fifield were meeting just before question time to thrash out a deal.
The handouts for media organisations comes on top of the government already approving the Nick Xenophon Team's request for an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission probe into the impact tech giants Google and Facebook was having on the media and advertising industries.

The government and Senator Xenophon had been close to a deal last month but talks ended in a stalemate over the South Australian's push for the introduction of tax offsets for smaller media organisations that invested in newsgathering.

The major sticking point for the government as it tries to negotiate has been the abolition of the "two out of three rule", which prevents a single media company owning a newspaper, radio station and TV station in the same market, with concerns its axing would lead to a loss of diversity.
Labor has refused to back that, although endorses other measures, while the Greens and Senator Xenophon have been focused on extracting concessions to protect media diversity in their negotiations in return for supporting abolition of the rule.
Other elements to the government's include scrapping the "reach" rule that prevents a TV network from broadcasting to more than 75 per cent of the population, slashing broadcast licence fees, trimming the sports anti-siphoning list and greater restrictions of gambling advertising during sport.
One Nation has agreed to support the changes in return for a crackdown on the ABC.

More to come