Democracy not served by dominant publisher
The foreign-owned Central Coast Express Advocate won the coveted Community Newspaper of the Year 2009.
The award took place in the presence of News Corporation's chairman Rupert Murdoch at the Sydney Opera House.
It is misleading to claim that this publication is a newspaper when 89.5 per cent of its content is advertising and only 10.5 per cent is news.
Democracy is not well served when the powerful media magnate Rupert Murdoch controls a publisher with no serious competitors on the Central Coast.
Small publishers who lawfully deliver their advertising material into letterboxes suffer unfair competition when most of the Advocate's 250,000 copies are simply thrown on public footpaths.
Councils have a duty to prevent littering and collect for the public revenue fair rent from any business that uses the public footpaths for private profit.
Gosford Council not only fails to collect its rightful revenue and prevent such littering, it actually pays the foreign-owned Central Coast Express Advocate good money to enclose council's public notices to be part of the hundreds of kilograms of paper that is dumped on council's footpaths.
Council's must enforce littering laws without fear or favour and collect all rents due to the public revenue.
Letter, 6 Jan 2010
John Collins, Woy Woy