EDITORIAL: Tech companies owe audiences reliable news

It’s not an industry secret that journalism is facing significant turmoil.

The rise of the internet disrupted the business model news providers have relied upon for decades and, in the case of newspapers, centuries.

The flipside of that is that the internet has also widened the reach of those news providers further than ever before.

Audiences have grown as revenues contracted. Newsrooms have slimmed down as difficult decisions have been made about what a resilient news industry will look like.

It means journalists are asked to do more and more with less. And we do it because we believe strongly in our mission to inform and entertain.

We’re proud to serve our audience. The rise of misinformation and disinformation, mostly spread online, has given our mission a renewed purpose.

We want to be there for you, to bring you the facts and insight you need to make sense of the world.

That means we need to be where you are. We want to be on your social media channels as a source of information you know you can trust.

The News Media Bargaining Code, devised by the former Coalition government in 2021, was a watershed moment for the news industry in Australia. It gave the Government the power to force tech companies to negotiate with news organisations and pay for the journalism they are using.

As yet, it has not been activated, because Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram) and Google both voluntarily entered into agreements with news providers. In doing so, these giant tech companies recognised that they profit off the work of Australian journalists, and that work has value. Significant value.

Meta’s agreements with Australian news organisations are estimated to be worth about $66 million.

That’s money that goes directly into newsrooms, paying journalists’ salaries and allowing them to bring you stories.

But now the Mark Zuckerberg-owned company has decided to renege.

It’s refusing to renew its commercial deals. It’s justifying pulling out by claiming that users aren’t interested in news content.

As is typical of much of the content on Meta, that is blatant disinformation.

About half of all Australians say they use social media sources to access news content. It is particularly important among young consumers aged 18-24, who are the most likely to nominate social media as their primary source of news.

Making it more difficult for that cohort to access news is not just bad for news outlets and individual consumers, it’s bad for democracy.

In this era of misinformation, Meta should be doing what it can to ensure its platforms carry credible information. This move signals that it simply doesn’t care about truth or the health of democracy — only revenue.

With or without Meta’s money, Australian news organisations will survive and continue to fulfil our responsibilities to our audience. We hope Meta does the same.