(Video) Rajya Sabha TV (RSTV) The Big Picture: Making Tech Giants Pay for News

Topic: Making Tech Giants Pay for News

Guest:

Rameesh Kailasam, (CEO, IndiaTech.Org)
Jiten Jain, (Digital Media Expert)
Yatish Rajawat, (Senior Journalist)

Topic Description:

Australia finalised plans on Tuesday to make Facebook and Google pay its media outlets for news content, a world-first move aimed at protecting independent journalism that has been strongly opposed by the internet giants. Under laws to go to parliament this week, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the Big Tech firms must negotiate payments for content that appears on their platforms with local publishers and broadcasters. Until recently, most countries have stood by as advertisers redirect spending to the world’s biggest social media website and search engine, starving newsrooms of their main revenue source and bringing widespread shutdowns and job losses. The law has been designed to address the loss of advertising revenue from traditional media companies to the digital behemoths. For every $100 of online advertising spend, $53 goes to Google, $28 to Facebook and $19 to everyone else. The loss of advertising revenue has been partially offset by subscriptions but it hasn’t been enough to stem the cuts to newsrooms, journalists leaving the industry and media outlets going broke and closing. Meanwhile Google and Facebook are doing very well: Google made $4.3bn in advertising revenue in Australia last year and Facebook made $0.7bn, according to documents filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.