New deal for news
Australian precedent could change the way news works worldwide
GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK have signed groundbreaking revenue– sharing agreements with news organizations in Australia, following legislation by the Australian government to force through such deals if they were not reached voluntarily.
The News Media And Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code is intended to “address the bargaining power imbalances” between digital platforms and news organizations, which have seen revenues shrink and jobs lost as advertisers move elsewhere. But observers criticized the influence of interests such as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which is seen as close to the Australian government.
The code targets Google Search and Facebook NewsFeed, obliging them to pay news organizations for featuring and linking to their content. Both platforms protested. A Google representative says: “The ability to link freely between websites is fundamental to Search. This code creates an unreasonable and unmanageable financial and operational risk to our business.” Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the web, agrees that forcing platforms to pay for certain content struck at the heart of the web and could make it “unworkable.”
Facebook says it gets little commercial gain from news content. It adds: “At the heart of it, in Facebook’s view, is a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between Facebook and news publishers. It’s the publishers themselves who choose to share their stories on social media, or make them available to be shared by others, because they get value from doing so.”
In protest, Facebook actually cut off access to feeds from news sources in Australia for a time but won no support from this, partly because it also cut off public health information in a time of the pandemic. It backed down after talks with the government.
Instead of agreeing to pay for links, Google launched a limited version of News Showcase in Australia, featuring selected articles in an “enhanced view” format. It has signed up more than 50 publishers in Australia and more than 500 globally, who will gain some control over how their stories are presented in Showcase and in story panels in Google News. However, critics say this won’t affect Google’s estimated 95% dominance of Search in Australia or give news sources any financial return from Search.
US legislators have not shown any appetite for interventions like those of their Australian counterparts, but most of the players — including Google, Facebook, and some of the news organizations — are American–based, and it remains to be seen what precedent this sets and how the agreements play out globally.