News Corp CEO lashes Google for piracy, zealotry and kleptocracy at Lowy Institute event
Thomson
News Corp CEO Robert Thomson has accused Google of “piracy, zealotry and kleptocracy”, labelled LinkedIn a “pretender” and described the redistribution of content created by journalists as “unnatural”.
Speaking at the Lowy Institute Media Awards last night, Thomson, who is in Sydney for News Corp’s board meeting, warned that without the proper recognition, and without proper remuneration, well-resourced reporting “will be ever more challenged”.
“For the distributionists do indeed have powerful distribution channels, Google and Facebook, and pretenders like LinkedIn, which is spam central. None of them actually create content, and they certainly have little intention of paying for it, but they do redistribute the content created by others – they would argue that such redistribution is a natural extension of their role as social networks. I would argue that much of the redistribution is an unnatural act,” Thomson said.
I don’t even know where to start…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBzG0ilUxEk
This article is spot on. It’s getting really difficult to bug people’s phones, create fictitious stories without being sued, and be the bastion of quality journalism that News Corp has proven itself to be. And it’s all Googles fault. It’s just not fair on them.
Has Robert Thomson read the Daily Telegraph? This is hilarious!
What Robert (the old guard) is saying is that people should pay his company loads of money, for little return, so he and his ilk can line their pockets and live like kings.
Robert: do one!
Oh and when The Daily Telegraph lead with a headline about greed and highlighting that Google needed to pay more tax. FFS!?
Viva the revolution.
Wow. Just wow.
Oh the Irony….whilst I know they’re an easy company to bash, I’m wondering about the loads of money part of your little piece…a copy of the Tele or the HS or the Oz for that matter doesn’t cost that much, and buying in on their web sites is really not that expensive compared to other news sites. My main point being that if you want to have professional journos they have to be paid…and I know you’re going to argue the toss on both the words ‘professional’ and ‘journos’, the bottom line is they still break stories regularly and still set the agenda for the evening TV news and radio…so who’s going to pay if not the consumer?
Why do News Corp’s CEOs always need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century?
The professional journalist is indeed an endangered species and much of the online content is crap. But there is a silver lining in all this. The right wing opinions of Rupert Murdoch, so well understood by his compliant minions in journalism are increasingly less potent politically. Every election sees the Murdoch press having less and less ability to influence the public. This is a wonderful thing.
This reads like an article from The Onion
When the journalistic well runs dry, all we will have is lists and cat videos. Enjoy professionaly curated news while you can
Oh my giddy aunt.
Pot, meet kettle.
An old man stood on the shore, commanding the tide to go back.
@Just wondering.
There will always be professional and more importantly credible, independent journalists. They will rarely pen articles out of News Corp’s offices though.
@ Just wondering
I will often hear about news breaking on Twitter?
How embarrassing. I love that News journos regularly rip other content owners video content in the name of news just in order to sell a pre-roll ad. D
on’t get me started on this. What would happen to News traffic if they all of a sudden stopped indexing for SEO? What would happen to all those divisions of News sister company 21st Century Fox all of a sudden didn’t have a lucrative distribution channel in YouTube? Rome would burn. The reality is that News used to be in the distribution game but blew being a player in the future distribution world by under investing in the future in the name of protecting the past.
Of course News could just put a small text file on their sites so google didn’t index them.
Mr Thomson should investigate D for Dictionary. He will find that “bowdlerise” means:
“to expurgate by removing or modifying passages considered vulgar or objectionable.”
Whatever else Google may be guilty of, it hasn’t been bowdlerising anything that I can see.
Incumbent blather – and the band played on while the ship went down.