How can our news media be protected against the market power of overbearing search engines, social media giants and other so-called ‘big tech’ players mediating the digital economy? This is a classic public interest case because the quality, diversity and consistency of publishers have direct and immediate consequences for the user of digital news.
Many of the imbalances and fractures plaguing the relationship between news publishers and technology platforms are captured in two baskets of concerns: the absence of proper assessment (the case of compensation), and calculative accountability (the case of transparency).
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There is no doubt that digital advertising revenue is jointly generated by publishers and platforms. However, publishers are hampered in proper assessment of the share of such revenue generated from their journalism. Furthermore, they are completely dependent on the conditions imposed by the platforms operating under monopolistic or monopolistic conditions. Such dependencies arise from platforms having multiple roles in digital news markets, notably as intermediaries in the discovery of online news content, and as providers of infrastructure for publishers to participate in the online advertising market.
The second imbalance stems from a lack of calculative accountability. Platforms unilaterally define the measure of online news quality and popularity; They arbitrarily change the measures to suit their preferences, often after first imposing them on the publishers. Furthermore, they refuse to share relevant data on advertising and viewership with stakeholders in the news economy, including regulators and others assessing the health of digital markets.
Mitigation
Australia tackles it in 2021 propose a system To control interactions between publishers and platforms. But the forums retaliated. Facebook blocked its Australian users By accessing thousands of news sites, including those on massive wildfires and critical sources of public information during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was only after winning major concessions from the Australian government that he ‘turned the news back on’ which were contained in the final draft. News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Transaction Code, 2021,
Since then, other governments have introduced various mechanisms to correct the imbalance between publishers and platforms. last month, online news act of canada Fair compensation for publishers and stability of local news were guaranteed. The United Kingdom is planning to introduce legislation to regulate the relationship between big tech and news outlets.
Even in the Global South, where publishers in some countries are vulnerable to the big technology that also provides access to the online world, things are moving forward. While steps are being taken in Brazil and South Africa, Indonesia’s proposed digital platform accountability for quality journalism is set to materialize through a presidential decree. The United States, the home of big tech, has yet to reveal its cards. In California, a bastion of big tech, the Journalism Protection Act, where platforms are obliged to pay publishers for news content, has been put on hold until 2024, despite bipartisan support in the state’s lower house.
The wording of these regulations – varied and fascinating in itself – reflects different motivations and priorities. Still, their overarching aim is to correct a twin imbalance: ensuring that news outlets sharing their content through search engines, social media or aggregators receive a fair share of digital advertising revenue, and visibility over data generated by platforms selling and distributing news online. Otherwise, news publishers will be forced to continue accepting unfair, and perhaps untenable, terms from the platforms. They will hesitate to invest in the production of high-quality journalism and on-the-ground reportage, thereby reducing the space for purveyors of misinformation and disinformation in the digital public sphere.
India’s sluggish response
Unfortunately, India has been slow to think, talk and act about reducing these twin imbalances.
In December 2021, the Union Minister of State for Electronics and Technology denied in Parliament any desire to make big tech payments for news. He revised his position the following year, and has been increasingly speaking out in recent months about the damage news publishers are doing in their dealings with the platforms.
In 2021, the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) filed a petition against Google in the Competition Commission of India (CCI). DNPA, an association of print and broadcast publishers, accused Google of unfairly valuing their digital advertising share, not remunerating them for snippets used by Google in its search results, and unilaterally and arbitrarily changing the mutually agreed revenue sharing model.
The DNPA also pointed out that Google is shirking its calculative accountability, neither sharing detailed data related to advertising revenue nor disclosing the basis of calculation of such revenue.
Although the facts presented by the DNPA are relevant to most people, they are not useful enough for evidence-based policy making. In January 2022, the CCI asked its office to investigate the matter in a report to be submitted within 60 days. In February 2022, The Indian Newspaper Society (INS) filed a similar petition; It also highlighted that Google’s search results are not based on the relevance of news content, creating an uneven playing field between different publishers. It was no surprise that the CCI took up the investigation of both the cases together.
The December 2022 report of the Standing Committee on Finance on ‘Anti-Competitive Practices by Big Tech Companies’ echoed the concerns of the DNPA and the INS. It underlined that some digital markets are likely to be dominated by one or two players, and within a very short period of time – that is, before policies are formulated and anti-competitive practices are decided. The Standing Committee recommended the urgency of evaluating anti-competitive behavior before monopolizing digital markets. This is in contrast to the current practice of ex-post, or retrospective, evaluation which is time-consuming and strains state capacity. Had the CCI report been submitted in due time, the Standing Committee would have been better informed about the imbalance between publishers and platforms. This should have prompted it to propose more concrete policy options, or at least to be less general in its comments.
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It has been almost 60 weeks since the CCI report was to be submitted in 60 days. Along with an imbalance that hurts news publishers, it also hurts readers, listeners and viewers of digital news. It then becomes a case where the interests of national news outlets clearly overlap with the public interest. At this time, these two interests are in tension, if not tension, because of the conduct of global big tech.
Vibodh Parthasarathy teaches media policy and is an associate professor at the Center for Culture, Media and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.