Just as in early 2021, when the Morrison government introduced its shakedown of the big tech companies at the behest of Australia’s corporate media, the level of gaslighting, self-interest and conflict of interest being served up by media over the role of tech giants in funding journalism is extraordinary.
Facebook’s refusal to submit to the shakedown — AKA the news media bargaining code — has elicited cries of outrage and demands for a declaration of regulatory war from News Corp, Nine and Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media, which continue to lie to their audiences that this is about tech giants paying for content they are stealing from news media.
What it’s really about is the way big tech has developed a new advertising model, one far more effective than its now rather quaint strategy of spraying advertising at as many people as possible in the hope of reaching the small minority interested in and capable of buying a particular goods or service. Moreover, traditional media companies have been the victims of a decoupling of news from whole asset classes of advertising, like property and cars, moved online, to sites owned by… erm… traditional media companies.
The logic of the news media bargaining code isn’t that of ending a rip-off perpetrated by foreign tech giants. Instead, it’s similar to Coles and Woolworths successfully demanding, on the basis of all the great work they’ve done for the community, that the government forcibly transfer profit from an international competitor that had successfully disrupted their business model.
At least in the case of the supermarket duopoly, selling necessities to the community is their core business model. In the case of Nine, public interest journalism is an occasional side effect of its main entertainment business model. In the case of News Corp and Seven, there is virtually no public interest journalism to speak of, only right-wing propaganda. The shrieks of rage currently coming from the media are like those of gangsters whose rich target has stopped paying protection money.
Like many Australian companies, News Corp, Seven and Nine devote as much effort to trying to influence regulatory outcomes in their favour as they do to providing goods and services to consumers and other business. From streaming content regulations, to cross-media rules, to the near-abolition of licence fees, to their resistance to gambling advertising regulation and — in the case of Seven and Nine — anti-siphoning, the big media companies are assiduous in lobbying, threatening, cajoling and otherwise encouraging major party politicians to look after them, almost always successfully.
Such efforts are now increasingly desperate because, unlike in the era of mass media that ended around 2008 with the arrival of social media, such regulatory favours are there not to maximise the profits of the big media companies but to minimise their losses.
The policy problem this creates isn’t — as the media corporations insist — how to prop up their dying oligopoly, but how to provide the collateral benefit that leaks as a by-product from their primary activities, public interest journalism. In Australia, government has long been seen (except by News Corp) as a legitimate source of support for public interest journalism, via support for the ABC and SBS (and, arguably, community broadcasting). Other mechanisms, like taxpayer-funded political party spending during election campaigns, have acted as de facto mechanisms of similar support.
Government remains the most appropriate source of support for public interest journalism, even as the existing media oligopoly dies. Imposing the responsibility on foreign multinationals on a fictitious policy pretext, and structuring that responsibility to prop up influence-peddling incumbents, is about the trading of favours among the powerful, not about delivering the public good of journalism that holds the powerful accountable.
All the more reason why the failure of the ABC to properly serve its public broadcasting role by becoming an opinion-free zone staffed (not exclusively, but trending there) by average journos with a background in commercial media, not investing in documentaries, not investing in current affairs, not investing in state political coverage, not investing in local drama, etc etc is actually as critical an issue as the News-Nine duopoly.
Spot on. The first silly sentence of BK’s silly last para – in an otherwise first class piece – is made silly by – yet again – simply asking for a clear definition from ‘public interest journalists’ of what, exactly, is and is not said ‘public interest journalism’. I can guarantee everyone here 10,000 % that every last ‘journalist working for every last ‘journalism’ outlet will give everyone the same answer: ME, MINE, OURS, MINE, ME me me. And every one will be right ‘some’ of the time, and wrong ‘some’ of the time, too. Almost exclusively in the eye of the beholder.
However the ABC is disappointingly investing in programs presented by so called journalists putting on aprons and prancing around kitchens. The fact that the subjects are politicians doesn’t make them interesting.
Very good
Like the MSM’s shadow, investment in ‘horse race calling’ masquerading as reporting re. polls, Canberra &/or LNP talking points and sport.
One thinks our ‘free market’ purveyors i.e. RW MSM cartel, need ‘free market’ principles and discipline very firmly i.e. if or when financial issues arise, then break up assets and sell at market price.
Not entirely true. I work in film and TV and the ABC have been excellent in providing work where all else has gone missing. RFDS, Savage River, Gold Diggers, The Fires…. Stan being the only other really continuously making local content. Some things still are working…
Mary is traumatized by her dolly being torn apart by the family dog when she was 3 y.o. The guvmint MUST provide counselling.
Yes, that is typical of the so called “human interest” puff pieces increasingly being served up on the ABC news app. Rarely do we see genuine, in-depth journalism.
Remember when the Coalition gave tens of millions of dollars to the Molochs via Fox Sports, supposedly for broadcasting women’s sports? (- a commercially rational move without public funding incentives). At the same time, they cut funding for the ABC (see Coalition gives another $10m to Foxtel to boost women’s sport on TV | Foxtel | The Guardian). I’d prefer my taxes weren’t handed over to foreign billionaires, directly or indirectly.
We never did find out exactly how that money was used to benefit women’s sport.
How can Newscorp claim news is being pinched from it, as far as I can tell from its print and pay-to-view TV sources, it does not produce news, just pro-LNP propaganda and science-denying articles that please big fossil fuel producers.
as far as I can tell, all their content is behind a paywall, which makes this “theft” doubly curious
No point in Meta handing over $ millions for NewschatGPT product!
If we can get the government-supported media to focus on public interest journalism rather than aping their commercial competitors (and journalists’ likely future employers) all will be well.
Hear, hear! No fan of Meta, but why should it pay News Corp to link to its shoddy content? News Corp should be grateful