The Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill is set to have its second reading in Parliament next week. What happens next has significant implications for the right of all New Zealanders to "seek, impart and receive information and opinions" as guaranteed under section 14 of the Bill of Rights Act.
The Bill, if enacted, will allow news media companies to strike better deals for compensation from various Big Tech companies such as Google and Meta for “using” their news content.
According to the Bill, the NZ Government would play a role in ensuring the funds are collected from Big Tech and doled out to NZ news media companies via a proposed distribution scheme.
Google has pointed out that it doesn’t actually use news content, but instead links users to such stories. For those of us old enough to remember, this is akin to listing your business in the Yellow Pages. If my memory serves me correctly, the Yellow Pages were offering a service to our businesses, not the other way around. How is Google’s role as a directory substantially different?
The immediate problem though is what happens if Google, for instance, comes good on its threat to pull all news content search results if the legislation is passed. Such a move would effectively produce a news blackout on the search engine. Users and news media would be the biggest losers. Google and co. may feel a slight dip in profits, but the prognosis would be far from terminal. Recent examples of similar action taken overseas only support this claim.
Now consider how unpopular this move would be with the public. According to polling results just released, the prospect of a news blackout as threatened by Google is proving very unpopular. 75% of those under the age of 40 responded that they would be somewhat annoyed or very annoyed if platforms and search engines came good on the threat, with even 52% of those over 60 feeling this way too.
Approximately two-thirds of total respondents from the polling would be somewhat or very annoyed. Particularly telling, are the political leanings of respondents with those on the left reporting more negatively than those on the right.
The coalition Government doesn’t want to subsidise public journalism, fully aware the Public Interest Journalism Fund introduced under the last Government was highly unpopular. But while it’s holding the purse strings tight, the current Government doesn’t want to be blamed if the NZ news media sector dies on its watch. If newsrooms go down in this country, the arrangement of mutual convenience that most political parties have with reporters will disappear with it.
Allowing the Government to dole out shares of the spoils to different media groups via a levy system – whether public or private companies – is no less dubious an arrangement than the PIJF deal proved to be.
Recent evidence from around the world suggests that an independent fourth estate works best when these kinds of relationships – financial or otherwise – are avoided altogether. If news media cannot maintain a significant degree of political neutrality, then it is unethical to funnel taxes and/or levies towards them, no matter how nostalgic we may feel about TVNZ or some similar media institution.
News media companies have succeeded in popularising the narrative that Big Tech is responsible for making good journalism economically unviable in NZ. There may be some truth to this. Advertisers have long been migrating away from traditional media to online platforms. Yet journalists and editors still seem largely unwilling to do the necessary soul searching as a profession and recognise that public trust in the fourth estate has been dropping for a number of years now because of a perceived ideological bias considered to be rife throughout news reporting and commentary.
The effects of the PIJF only turbo-charged this decline in consumer confidence. Without the Government to subsidise them, newsrooms around the country will have to reinvent their business models. Yes, that will be extremely risky for them in the short term. Some companies will go under. But it will not be the end of news, just the end of news in its current form. It will be the beginning of a necessary reinvention.
The big questions going forward are two-fold.
If Big Tech firms concede and get their tickets clipped for news content, where will this hunt for revenue end? Given that companies like Google are mainly acting as conduits for news stories by directing people to news websites, retired judge and IT legal expert David Harvey has pointed out that news media already benefits from this arrangement and has come to rely on it over the past ten years.
But it’s easier for news media to blame the new technology, than it is to ask the tough introspective questions about the internal nature of their own sector. So, this isn’t, in principle, about Big Tech stealing intellectual property. Rather, news media wants a bigger piece of the profit pie and companies like Google and Meta are going to be forced to pay for the privilege of publicising news content. This doesn’t make sense.
However, let’s not forget about the herd of elephants in the room.
What do we do long term about the oligopoly Big Tech firms have over our online information highways?
Foreign owned Big Tech firms like Google and Meta hold most of the cards. With a near complete digital stranglehold over this country, the experience of the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill ought to be a giant wake-up call to us all.
Our politicians are scared of Big Tech, and so they should be. But at some point they’re going to have to address it in a way that not only keeps the marketplace competitive, but also democratic.
Whether it’s the risk of Government acting as an arbiter in news media funding, or Big Tech holding the nation to ransom, we cannot allow our fundamental civil liberties to be threatened.
Nick Hanne is the Education Partnerships Manager at the Free Speech Union. This article was originally published by The Platform and is published here with kind permission.
According to the Bill, the NZ Government would play a role in ensuring the funds are collected from Big Tech and doled out to NZ news media companies via a proposed distribution scheme.
Google has pointed out that it doesn’t actually use news content, but instead links users to such stories. For those of us old enough to remember, this is akin to listing your business in the Yellow Pages. If my memory serves me correctly, the Yellow Pages were offering a service to our businesses, not the other way around. How is Google’s role as a directory substantially different?
The immediate problem though is what happens if Google, for instance, comes good on its threat to pull all news content search results if the legislation is passed. Such a move would effectively produce a news blackout on the search engine. Users and news media would be the biggest losers. Google and co. may feel a slight dip in profits, but the prognosis would be far from terminal. Recent examples of similar action taken overseas only support this claim.
Now consider how unpopular this move would be with the public. According to polling results just released, the prospect of a news blackout as threatened by Google is proving very unpopular. 75% of those under the age of 40 responded that they would be somewhat annoyed or very annoyed if platforms and search engines came good on the threat, with even 52% of those over 60 feeling this way too.
Approximately two-thirds of total respondents from the polling would be somewhat or very annoyed. Particularly telling, are the political leanings of respondents with those on the left reporting more negatively than those on the right.
The coalition Government doesn’t want to subsidise public journalism, fully aware the Public Interest Journalism Fund introduced under the last Government was highly unpopular. But while it’s holding the purse strings tight, the current Government doesn’t want to be blamed if the NZ news media sector dies on its watch. If newsrooms go down in this country, the arrangement of mutual convenience that most political parties have with reporters will disappear with it.
Allowing the Government to dole out shares of the spoils to different media groups via a levy system – whether public or private companies – is no less dubious an arrangement than the PIJF deal proved to be.
Recent evidence from around the world suggests that an independent fourth estate works best when these kinds of relationships – financial or otherwise – are avoided altogether. If news media cannot maintain a significant degree of political neutrality, then it is unethical to funnel taxes and/or levies towards them, no matter how nostalgic we may feel about TVNZ or some similar media institution.
News media companies have succeeded in popularising the narrative that Big Tech is responsible for making good journalism economically unviable in NZ. There may be some truth to this. Advertisers have long been migrating away from traditional media to online platforms. Yet journalists and editors still seem largely unwilling to do the necessary soul searching as a profession and recognise that public trust in the fourth estate has been dropping for a number of years now because of a perceived ideological bias considered to be rife throughout news reporting and commentary.
The effects of the PIJF only turbo-charged this decline in consumer confidence. Without the Government to subsidise them, newsrooms around the country will have to reinvent their business models. Yes, that will be extremely risky for them in the short term. Some companies will go under. But it will not be the end of news, just the end of news in its current form. It will be the beginning of a necessary reinvention.
The big questions going forward are two-fold.
If Big Tech firms concede and get their tickets clipped for news content, where will this hunt for revenue end? Given that companies like Google are mainly acting as conduits for news stories by directing people to news websites, retired judge and IT legal expert David Harvey has pointed out that news media already benefits from this arrangement and has come to rely on it over the past ten years.
But it’s easier for news media to blame the new technology, than it is to ask the tough introspective questions about the internal nature of their own sector. So, this isn’t, in principle, about Big Tech stealing intellectual property. Rather, news media wants a bigger piece of the profit pie and companies like Google and Meta are going to be forced to pay for the privilege of publicising news content. This doesn’t make sense.
However, let’s not forget about the herd of elephants in the room.
What do we do long term about the oligopoly Big Tech firms have over our online information highways?
Foreign owned Big Tech firms like Google and Meta hold most of the cards. With a near complete digital stranglehold over this country, the experience of the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill ought to be a giant wake-up call to us all.
Our politicians are scared of Big Tech, and so they should be. But at some point they’re going to have to address it in a way that not only keeps the marketplace competitive, but also democratic.
Whether it’s the risk of Government acting as an arbiter in news media funding, or Big Tech holding the nation to ransom, we cannot allow our fundamental civil liberties to be threatened.
Nick Hanne is the Education Partnerships Manager at the Free Speech Union. This article was originally published by The Platform and is published here with kind permission.
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