The news media flags Google to the DOJ.
“Everyone is killing the golden goose..and you’re kidding yourselves if on your own you think you’re going to be able to get money.”
The tech platforms are screwing the news business and the news media want the Feds to do something.
The row over Google’s unprecedented decision to block news links for some Californians sent the industry screaming to Jonathan Kanter at the Justice Department and Lina Khan at the FTC. The News Media Alliance, which represents news publishers, sent a letter yesterday with demands for an antitrust investigation writing, “Google – a company with over 90% of the search market that is also providing news –will impede the ability of competing news publishers to reach California news consumers. This is the kind of anticompetitive, exclusionary conduct that is unlawful under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, and the undersigned respectfully request that you investigate that possibility.”
Google says the news industry is demanding a “link tax.” It tallied profits of $73 billion last year.
Some very bad things are happening to the news business. On Monday night, I went to a sobering debate about what’s happening here, convened by Le Monde and Columbia University. It was predictably downbeat.
Tech antagonist, Justin Hendrix, of Tech Policy Press, who moderated the event, envisages a future where tech companies are vast global entities simply beyond the reach of governments to effectively regulate.
“Journalism is atomizing,” said NY Times contributing opinion writer Julia Angwin, in part because advertisers used to buy The WSJ to target middle managers in the market for a BMW, now they can find them on much cheaper sites. And OpenAI? “It’s just an acceleration of that right now. They’re going to take not just the ads but actually our content, ingested, and sell that too, so it’s an existential threat.”
Meanwhile Microsoft’s partner OpenAI is continuing to ink deals. France’s Le Monde, Spain’s Prisa Media are the latest media companies to add their content alongside Associated Press and Axel Springer. For the price of between $1 million to $5 million OpenAI has won access to the vast archives of some of the world’s biggest, most influential news providers. Fortune projects that OpenAI could become the first privately held startup to reach a trillion dollar valuation.
The news business may be under-selling itself, or getting what they can before audiences drain away to social video clips and pink slime news sites. Fast Company reports that 21,400 media industry workers were laid off in 2023. More than 3,000 work in digital, print and broadcast news media. As the industry shrinks, there are less resources to pay for the costly lawyers needed to protect the kind of wide ranging investigations that society needs.
“We’re in real trouble,” said another speaker, Anya Schiffrin, the director of tech, media and communications at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She researched a story on corrupt doormen in New York and struggled to get it published because of litigation concerns. You can read it here.
“Google is a total parasite on news, and OpenAI is a parasite on Google,” she said, urging the news business to work together.
“Everyone is killing the golden goose..and you’re kidding yourselves if on your own you think you’re going to be able to get money.”
Sylvie Kauffmann, a foreign affairs contributor to Le Monde posed an important question at the event: “Free and reliable information is essential to democracy…Are we in command or does the machine control us? That is a very existential question. Who is in control?” That seems like an easy answer right now. Not us.
The importance of powerful investigative journalism seems to be cherished only when it ebbs away. In the UK, the BBC is cost cutting at its hard hitting political show, “Newsnight,” with top talent exiting. Mark Urban, the show’s diplomatic editor said he didn’t want to remain with what’s left of the show. He was shocked by how many people thanked him for his work in response to his post on X about his departure. If only we can all keep hanging on against the giant wave that is washing so many journalists away.
Media organizations have spent billions creating expensive journalism only to see themselves being outflanked by “MSM,” haters who flourish in online forums pulling down real reporting. Founded in 1851, the New York Times Company’s market cap today is $6.94 billion. By contrast Reddit, which houses, “18 years of human conversations,” has a market cap of $6.8 billion.
“The question of getting tech companies to contribute to journalism is a live one,” said Schiffrin, adding that Google’s decision to stop linking to news, “raises a huge policy question for governments. Because what do you do when these big companies throw their weight around?” The answer it seems so far is not much.
The EU is introducing the AI Act, the world’s first legal framework to help address risks associated with AI applications. “The EU is only our hope,” concluded Angwin.
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(Former Googler here, not in News or Search)
"the kind of wide ranging investigations that society needs. " -- I'm sorry, but most of these "journalists" wouldn't know a "wide ranging investigation" if they ran over it with their e-bikes.
Help me with this reference: see themselves being outflanked by “MSM,” haters who flourish in online forums pulling down real reporting.