A select committee is considering views on a bill that seeks a more level playing field in the digital market that our media industry operates in, where tech giants dominate.
Parliament's Economic Development, Science and Innovation select committee today heard from a range of New Zealand's news media companies about how the changing media environment and the dominance of tech giants are killing them.
The committee has been listening to submissions on a bill that seeks a more level playing field in the digital market that our media industry operates in. They argue that the tech giants whose digital platforms host news content that the media outlets produce are able to generate great revenue from this but share almost none of it with the outlets who do all the work.
Economic Development, Science and Innovation select committee chair Parmjeet Parmar (left) and Willie Jackson listen to submissions on the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill.
This imbalance is something affecting all New Zealand media companies, from the big outlets like RNZ, Stuff or the NZ Herald, to small town newspapers such as the Ashburton Guardian newspaper, whose co-owner and managing editor Daryl Holden was among those submitting to the committee this morning.
"Simply those digital internet companies such as Google, Meta (which runs Facebook and Instagram) and Microsoft are creaming it at the expense of every New Zealand media company who in many ways are slowly but surely bleeding to death. That's because those internet giants are using and sharing news produced by New Zealand media organisations on their mega digital platforms at zero costs to themselves. They are reaping unimaginable wealth and power building their businesses almost entirely off content created by others," Holden said.
The Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill seeks to create a bargaining system between New Zealand news media entities and operators of digital platforms to support commercial arrangements for news content. It was introduced by the previous Labour government and passed its first reading last August.
Small step
The difficulties facing the Ashburton Guardian, which employs seventeen local people and is considering going digital-only, are not uncommon for media outlets in this country. Holden welcomed the bill as a small step that can be taken to bring tech giants to the negotiating table.
"It's been reported that Google's revenue in New Zealand was 78 million dollars in 2022 but it also paid its parent company in the US a separate service fee of 870 million that year. A small country of 5 million delivers nearly one billion dollars of value to Google. What do New Zealand media companies get out of it? Bugger all," he explained…