SYDNEY, Feb 11, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The head of Australia’s competition
watchdog warned Monday that tough new regulation of tech giants like Google
and Facebook was needed to protect the future of independent journalism.
Rod Sims, chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
(ACCC), said the market power wielded by Google and Facebook has had a
devastating impact on Australian news media.
While the number of journalists employed by Australian newspapers fell 20
percent from 2014 to 2017 as print advertising revenues dwindled, Sims said,
Google and Facebook between them captured nearly 70 percent of all online
advertising spend.
“This shift in advertising revenue online, and to digital platforms, has
reduced the ability of media businesses to fund news and journalism,” Sims
said in remarks prepared for delivery to Sydney’s International Institute of
Communications.
“We cannot simply leave the production of news and journalism to market
forces,” added Sims, whose agency has been carrying out a lengthy probe of
the impact of digital platforms on the news industry in Australia.
While the platforms capture the vast majority of advertising revenue, they
do not create any original news, Sims said.
“Rather they select, curate, evaluate, rank and arrange news stories
produced by third parties,” he said, noting that this market power increased
the “risk of filter bubbles and unreliable news on digital platforms”.
“Holding such critical positions in both the media and advertising markets
results in special responsibilities,” he said.
The ACCC launched its inquiry into the power of digital platforms a year
ago, and is accepting final submissions from industry players until the end
of this week, before issuing its final report in June.
But Sims signalled on Monday that the final recommendations would include
calls for broad new regulations on the digital behemoths and the opaque
algorithms they use in disseminating news and advertising.
“Virtually no media regulation applies to digital platforms and this
contributes to regulatory disparity between media sectors that would appear
to provide the digital platforms with an unfair advantage,” he said.
A media regulator, he said, should have the power to compel platforms to
reveal how news is ranked in search results, including whether advertiser-
funded content is ranked higher than paid content, or if original news
content is outranked by copycat stories and so-called clickbait.
The ACCC could also recommend that platforms provide a “quality” badge
alongside content produced by recognised news media as a counter to
disinformation.
Finally, Sims suggested a series of proposals to support local and
independent journalism, including tax offsets for people who subscribe to
news media which meet a set of quality standards.