The showdown in California is the latest fight between the tech giants and the news industry. Facebook and Google also resisted efforts in Australia and Canada to force the companies to cut deals with news publishers. LEON NEAL/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
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LEON NEAL/AFP via Getty Images
The showdown in California is the latest fight between the tech giants and the news industry. Facebook and Google also resisted efforts in Australia and Canada to force the companies to cut deals with news publishers.
LEON NEAL/AFP via Getty Images
Facebook and Instagram will block all news articles in California if state lawmakers pass a bill aimed at funneling money from tech platforms to media organizations, a Meta spokesman threatened Wednesday.
The California Journalism Preservation Act they would essentially tax the advertising profits that platforms get from the distribution of news articles. Under the measure, 70 percent of the money collected from the so-called “use fee” would support newsrooms across the state.
The bill’s sponsor, Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, a Democrat who represents Oakland, argues the measure could provide a “lifeline” to local news organizations that have seen advertising revenue plummet.
“As news consumption has moved online, community media outlets have shrunk and closed at an alarming rate,” Wicks said at a hearing on the bill earlier this year. this month, noting that more than 100 California news organizations have gone under in the past decade. .
But now, Meta warns that the legislation would cause the company to block the sharing of news articles in California on Facebook and Instagram.
The bill, the company argued, would primarily help out-of-state sites “under the guise” of helping news publishers in California.
“If the Preservation of Journalism Act is passed, we will be forced to remove news from Facebook and Instagram, rather than pay into a large fund that primarily benefits large out-of-state media companies with the excuse to help California publishers,” Andy Stone. , spokesperson for Meta, said Wednesday.
Asked how exactly the act would force Meta to stop distributing news articles, Stone said, “It’s pay or take the news out. It’s forcing our hand.”
Danielle Coffey, executive vice president of the trade group News Media Alliance, criticized Meta for threatening to block articles in the state, saying the struggling news industry would benefit from technology platforms paying their fair share.
“Meta’s threat to remove news is undemocratic and inappropriate. We’ve seen it [this] in their playbook earlier,” Coffey said in a statement.
Threats in California echo Big Tech warnings in Washington and abroad
Facebook and Google have developed a predictable response to efforts to make the media industry pay for articles: threatening to stop carrying news in protest.
These are not empty threats; Facebook briefly blocked news articles in Australia over a similar measure forcing tech companies to pay publishers for news content. Google said it would withdraw its search engine from the country before reaching a settlement.
Lawmakers in Washington unveiled a plan last year aimed at helping media outlets negotiate with tech companies and Facebook said would drag news from the platform nationally.
Canada is also getting a taste of it. There, the tech giants to say they are ready to pull the plug on news content if a similar measure is enacted. As proof, Google has done it even blocked news articles from the searches of some users.
A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on the California bill.
While tech companies and publishers tussle over the legislation, many news publishers have begun to move away from social media and focus on newsletters, podcasts and subscription-based models.
40,000 newsroom jobs lost as advertising revenue falls
The media industry has been hemorrhaging jobs for years. Between 2008 and 2020, around 40,000 jobs in newsrooms disappeared. the Pew Research Center has found.
And while many factors have contributed to the news industry’s woes, the tech industry’s dominance over online advertising has dealt a major blow.
According to figures provided to NPR by Insider Intelligence, services owned by Meta or Google have collected nearly 70% of digital advertising revenue made by 2023.
In Australia, Facebook and Google eventually relented and reached agreements with news publishers. Bill Grueskin, a professor at Columbia University’s School of Journalism who has studied Australian law, found that generated nearly $150 million for news organizations.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation was able to hire 50 new journalists in underserved areas of the country as a result of the law.
California is the first state to try to replicate the Australian model.
Experts who study the news industry say that while the Australian news landscape is different from that of the US, given how concentrated it is, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. controls more than half the market, many other states will be watching how the showdown in Sacramento plays out. .
“We are now in a battle for unfettered revenue, with many news companies, emboldened by the deal in Australia, becoming quite vocal and aggressive in making this case,” said John Wihbey, a professor of journalism at Northeastern University.
The California bill will receive a vote in the California Assembly on Thursday. It is expected to pass and pass the state Senate.
Critics fear the bill will hurt, not help, the media
In California, struggling publishers have come out strongly in favor of the bill.
“In plain terms, Big Tech is bleeding publishers without providing any resources to create high-quality content,” Troy Masters, the editor of the Los Angeles Blade, wrote on Tuesday at the Sacramento bee. “This is not a theoretical problem. Information deserts are a reality in California at a time when misinformation is at an all-time high, causing Americans’ trust in democracy and our institutions to dwindle to an alarming rate.”
However, others fear that California’s legislation could have unintended consequences that end up hurting the media it is intended to help.
For example, media analyst and editor Ken Doctor has argued that bad actors with sites that peddle disinformation could game the system and end up getting funded. Other concerns: The bill would increase scandalous headlines from sites looking to get a piece of the new pot of money or funnel the money to hedge fund owners who have cut newsrooms in search of profits.
“I applaud [that] legislators’ willingness to help the local news business,” said Dr he said the Los Angeles Times. “But I think what they really need is a much deeper and broader understanding of the mechanics and nuances of how this business works.”
Media scholar Amanda Lotz, who teaches at the Queensland University of Technology, told NPR that “the business model of journalism is broadly collapsing,” but said it’s not fair to place the blame solely on the big tech companies of the media industry struggles.
Northeastern University’s Wihbey agrees, but said if California can force Big Tech to the bargaining table with news publishers, it could, even in small ways, shore up a beleaguered local news market.
“These deals won’t ‘save the news industry,’ but they could bring a new and reliable stream to support the news,” he said. “I hope that social platform companies can see it in their interest to support the underlying democratic societies that are, after all, the basis of their commercial markets.”
