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Sydney (AFP)
The head of the Australian competition watch group warned on Monday that a strict new regulation of tech giants such as 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 of Google and Facebook is having a devastating impact on the Australian media.
While the number of journalists employed by Australian newspapers has decreased by 20% between 2014 and 2017, the revenue of print advertising has decreased, said Sims, Google and Facebook have absorbed nearly 70% of advertising expenses in line.
"This change in online advertising revenues and digital platforms has reduced the ability of media companies to finance news and journalism," said Sims in a statement prepared for delivery to the International Institute. of Sydney Communications.
"We can not just let the production of news and journalism to market forces," added Mr. Sims, whose agency is conducting a lengthy investigation into the impact of digital platforms on the market. Australia's information sector.
While platforms capture the vast majority of ad revenue, they do not create any new original, Sims said.
"Instead, they select, organize, evaluate, categorize and organize the reports produced by third parties," he said, noting that this market power increased the "risk of filtering bubbles and information". unreliable on digital platforms ".
"Occupying such critical positions in the media and advertising markets carries special responsibilities," he said.
ACCC launched its survey of the power of digital platforms a year ago and is accepting final submissions from industry players until the end of this week, before publishing its final report in June.
But Sims said Monday that the final recommendations would include calls for new general regulations on digital behemoths and the opaque algorithms they use for information and advertising.
"Virtually no media regulation applies to digital platforms, which contributes to the regulatory disparity between the media sectors, which seems to confer an undue advantage on digital platforms," he said. -he declares.
A media regulator, he said, should have the power to require platforms to disclose the ranking of information in search results, especially if the content funded by advertisers is ranked higher than the paid content, or if the original content is replaced by copied articles called clickbait.
The ACCC could also recommend that platforms provide a "quality" badge alongside content produced by well-known media to combat misinformation.
Finally, Sims suggested a series of proposals to support local and independent journalism, including tax offsets for media subscribers meeting a set of quality standards.
© 2019 AFP
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