Ireland has to deal with its media funding before tackling Big Tech
THE EU is closely watching how Australia’s determination to make Big Tech pay for news plays out. Google and Facebook have baulked at the proposed legislation, which would require them to pay for news snippets and links to stories. But Australia has positioned itself as the democratic world’s leader on the regulation of social media and search firms and it is not for turning.
This has caught the attention of
MEPs working on two landmark draft European digital regulations — the
Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) — and who told the Financial Times last week the laws could be amended to include aspects of the Australian reforms.
The end result should be that tech firms, which are hoovering up vast chunks of ad revenue, will give something back to news organisations that are suffering financially even as they provide Big Tech with much of the content which makes them so appealing.
Globally, there is momentum growing on the regulation of Big Tech, and not before time.
Closer to home, the Future of Media Commission is beginning work on examining how public service content aims can be delivered and funded sustainably over the next 10 years. Its broad remit will take in broadcasting, print and online media. More than 800 submissions have been made to the commission.
At the core of their task is tackling the financial crisis at RTÉ, which has always been the main beneficiary of public service funding in Irish media through the licence fee.
RTÉ does mention Big Tech in its submission, asking the question “What does the shift in advertising revenues towards big tech firms mean for the future of print, online and broadcast media?”
It provides little by the way of answers, only to suggest it needs greater commercial flexibility in this digital age.
However, RTÉ’s main focus is on getting its public funding and finances addressed
by Government, something that it has been seeking for much of the last decade.
RTÉ has been loathe to identify what services it may have to axe if forced to cut its cloth. But in this submission it warns that its ability to provide comprehensive election, political and regional coverage will not be sustainable if its funding crisis is not solved.
RTÉ warned that its relevancy would decline without action from the Government on the licence fee.
It said “much is at risk beyond RTÉ’s own future”. As well as elections and the regions, areas which the broadcaster says might no longer be viable include investigative broadcast journalism, international broadcast news coverage and in-depth coverage of Northern Ireland.
It also identified Irish TV drama, the independent production sector, Irish children’s programming, cultural and arts programming, sport, Irish-language news, current affairs and radio services as areas which would be affected.
“None of these services or activities are sustainable on any scale without a strong and viable RTÉ,” the document states.
RTÉ, which is funded by both ad revenue and the licence fee, has long argued that its financial model needs an overhaul in order for it to compete in a digital age. Yet up until now RTÉ has jealously guarded its remit.
The organisation now seems ready to accept that this is no longer feasible. One of RTÉ’s challenges has been its inability to cut services as these are set out in legislation.
“RTÉ does not have adequate resources to deliver against our remit or fulfil our prescribed role,” states the submission.
This, perhaps, gets to the nub of the issue. RTÉ suggested during its last fiveyear review by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) that it required extra funding of €55m.
That is not going to happen. Rather than handing out piecemeal top-ups, politicians will have to grasp the nettle and decide on a newly-defined RTÉ, which may be a smaller organisation doing fewer things.
Rather than trying to fulfil an outdated remit, RTÉ will have to become an organisation that Ireland can afford or is willing to pay for.
RTÉ wants an independent regulator to decide on future funding increases — as it highlights in its submission, report after report has recommended more funding and financial overhauls. But little action has followed. Hopefully the Commission’s report will get a different response.
As politicians have shied away from making big decisions on the future of RTÉ’s funding, the issue has become far more complicated, as the global debate about Facebook and Google shows.
Now, in 2021, other organisations from radio to print are under pressure from the shift to Big Tech and are seeking — with some valid arguments — a slice of the public funding pie.
It is high time Ireland made a decision on what public service content it wishes to support, particularly in a time of international political volatility and an era of fake news.
It is not until we have put our own house in order that we can seriously take a position on the debate raging globally about Big Tech’s role in paying for news.