How Australia’s competition regulator is supporting news, but not quality

Giotis, C; Wilding, D; Molitorisz, S

How Australia’s competition regulator is supporting news, but not quality

Giotis, C

Wilding, D

Molitorisz, S

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Publisher:: Routledge
Publication Type:: Chapter
Citation:: News Quality in the Digital Age, 2023, pp. 169-186
Issue Date:: 2023-03-02

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Giotis, C https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7056-2928
dc.contributor.author	Wilding, D https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7806-8895
dc.contributor.author	Molitorisz, S https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6825-3392
dc.contributor.editor	Napoli, PM
dc.contributor.editor	Lawrence, RG
dc.date.accessioned	2023-11-04T21:26:23Z
dc.date.available	2023-11-04T21:26:23Z
dc.date.issued	2023-03-02
dc.identifier.citation	News Quality in the Digital Age, 2023, pp. 169-186
dc.identifier.isbn	9781003257998
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/172985
dc.description.abstract	At a time when many news media businesses are collapsing or faltering, regulators globally are wrestling with how to support news and journalism. Australia’s competition (anti-trust) regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, or ACCC, has developed a legislative scheme known as the ‘News Media Bargaining Code’, which seeks to enforce a compulsory arbitration process to determine how much Google and Facebook must pay for the use of news content. Highly controversial and subject to extensive redrafting, this regulatory intervention was seen as necessary because of the ‘bargaining power imbalance’ between these digital platforms and local news publishers. However, in the legislation that creates the Code, the word ‘quality’ appears only once. This seems particularly problematic given that the aim of the regulatory intervention was not simply to address unequal commercial positions, but to shore up the public benefit provided by journalism. In this chapter, we explain how key concerns around digital platforms’ effect on the capacity of Australian news providers to pursue public interest journalism have been translated into policy. We argue that by deploying the tools of competition law instead of media regulation, the Australian Government is overlooking the social utility of news and is building a scheme that could incentivize the creation of poor-quality content.
dc.format.extent	13
dc.language	en
dc.publisher	Routledge
dc.relation.ispartof	News Quality in the Digital Age
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.4324/9781003257998-15
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/embargoedAccess
dc.title	How Australia’s competition regulator is supporting news, but not quality
dc.type	Chapter
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Law
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Strength - CMT - Centre for Media Transition
utslib.copyright.status	open_access	*
pubs.consider-herdc	true
utslib.copyright.embargo	2024-09-09T00:00:00+1000Z
dc.date.updated	2023-11-04T21:26:22Z
pubs.place-of-publication	New York
pubs.publication-status	Accepted
dc.location	New York

Abstract:

At a time when many news media businesses are collapsing or faltering, regulators globally are wrestling with how to support news and journalism. Australia’s competition (anti-trust) regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, or ACCC, has developed a legislative scheme known as the ‘News Media Bargaining Code’, which seeks to enforce a compulsory arbitration process to determine how much Google and Facebook must pay for the use of news content. Highly controversial and subject to extensive redrafting, this regulatory intervention was seen as necessary because of the ‘bargaining power imbalance’ between these digital platforms and local news publishers. However, in the legislation that creates the Code, the word ‘quality’ appears only once. This seems particularly problematic given that the aim of the regulatory intervention was not simply to address unequal commercial positions, but to shore up the public benefit provided by journalism. In this chapter, we explain how key concerns around digital platforms’ effect on the capacity of Australian news providers to pursue public interest journalism have been translated into policy. We argue that by deploying the tools of competition law instead of media regulation, the Australian Government is overlooking the social utility of news and is building a scheme that could incentivize the creation of poor-quality content.

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:

http://hdl.handle.net/10453/172985