The legislation came out of the Australian Competition Commission’s 2017-2019 Digital Platforms inquiry. Rod Sims, then ACC chair, was the architect of the Code which received support from the left as well as the conservative Coalition in Australia. “Australia’s media outlets had been getting nowhere asking platforms to pay for content. The whole idea of the Code was to rebalance the bargaining power. I think we succeeded in that objective,” Sims said recently at a panel discussion at Columbia University which I organised.
The code was controversial, since those platforms, along with some others, stated that it would be Murdoch-owned press who stood to benefit the most. However, all the other large and small outlets were awarded funding. In particular, Country Press Australia, and then the Minderoo foundation in 2022, worked with smaller outlets with a view to enabling collective bargaining to gain significant funding. According to Rod Sims, money received from the code has given Australian media outlets more than A$200 million in funding each year.
Google brokered deals with most likely all the eligible Australian outlets, but Meta only did deals with outlets employing around 85% of Australian journalists. The government was required to review the new legislation and its findings, published in December 2022, concluded that 30 agreements had been signed with outlets but did not single out Meta for “designation”, which would have required the company to come to the table to do further deals.
Pressure from the platforms was strong. Sims recalled that Google threatened to pull out of providing search in Australia, and Facebook took down not only news, but also content about fires during the bush fire season and Covid information during the recent pandemic. “These are high-stakes games, so we expected this form of action and threats, but they drew condemnation from much of the Australian public and so didn’t amount to much,” said Sims.
The Canadian government has tabled the Online News Act, their version of the Australian Bargaining Code, which is likely to be passed later this year. This bill comes on the heels of a slew of other measures that help journalism, including a 25% payroll tax credits for journalistic labour, a subscription tax credit, and a new charitable status for journalism organisation. More broadly, the Canadian government is modernising their privacy laws and broadcast regulations, and developing a new online safety regime, similar to the Digital Services Act (DSA).
One of the criticisms of Australia’s code is that the payments made by the tech companies to the media outlets are kept secret. In Canada such information would be given to regulators but not released to the general public. Outlets with broad editorial standards and two full-time employees would be eligible. They must also provide annual reports to the regulator.
Google opposes the media bargaining code, and has offered to pay for a lobbyist in Canada for the smaller outlets who also oppose it. They have already made private deals with a selection of Canadian publishers, although the terms of these deals are not public. “One of their strategies seems to be to divide the independent publishers from legacy media, and to muddy the debate about the bill,” said McGill University’s Taylor Owen, speaking at the Columbia University panel. “The platforms have acted very aggressively, and I believe egregiously, in Canada, I think because they are terrified of a tipping point which could see other countries such as Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, the UK and even California and the US Congress all passing similar policies." Meta has already announced that it will end availability of news in Canada, if the act passes in its current form.
Also speaking at the Columbia conference on platform regulation was Pak Usman Kansong, Director General of Public Information and Communication at the Communication, Informatics Ministry. Usman said he expects a presidential Decree this year, which will also push platforms to pay for journalism, because big tech is threatening media sustainability, creating an unfair playing field, and has disrupted the quality of journalism. He noted that Indonesia has more than 46,000 online outlets, only 5% of which has been verified by the Press Council, so the government will need to ensure that quality small outlets can be included. Reuters reports that “the Press Council will determine price structures and payment schemes and mediate in the event of a dispute.”
Usman also mentioned plans for a “regulation [that] will dictate that platforms remove news that are not fit for quality of journalism or which don’t follow the code of conduct.” “We believe the dominance of big tech is due to the lack of government regulation. We are facing challenges from big tech but we can handle it,” he said, referencing two laws: #71 from 2019, and #20 from 2020.
Anya Schiffrin is a Senior lecturer at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and the director of the Technology. Media and Communications Specialization there.