AAP chair slams union for ‘conspiracy theory nonsense’, and says Guardian contributed to newswire’s closure
Australian Associated Press (AAP) chair and News Corp executive, Campbell Reid, has claimed the journalists’ union is peddling “conspiracy theory nonsense” and accused The Guardian of “gobsmacking hypocrisy” for making “decisions [that] have contributed to the closure of AAP”.
Yesterday, The Guardian, an AAP subscriber, reported that the newswire’s staff were told major shareholders News Corp and Nine no longer wanted to subsidise the service for subscription-paying competitors. AAP investment was costing the media owners around $10m and $5m, respectively, per year. Upon its closure, both Nine and News Corp have said they will instead expand their own news teams.
Campbell Reid, both the AAP’s chair and a News Corp executive
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) said both companies needed to answer to the “disturbing revelations” they wanted to “hurt their smaller rivals”.
“News Corp and Nine said the reason for shutting down AAP was that it was no longer financially viable and had been damaged by the proliferation of free news on social media and digital content aggregators,” MEAA Media’s federal president Marcus Strom said yesterday.
“However, today’s reports suggest a more sinister motive: the closure is designed to deliberately harm their print and online rivals who subscribe to AAP for news about politics, sport, business, courts and crime, and for breaking news. The fact that they didn’t put AAP up for sale indicates News and Nine simply wanted AAP shut down.
“For months, AAP staff were misled by management that the company was in good shape. Some employees have taken out mortgages or shifted cities in good faith because of the assurances they were given by management.”
Reid, who is group executive of corporate affairs, policy and government relations at News Corp in addition to his AAP role, said Strom’s statement “is conspiracy theory nonsense”.
“The world’s creative industries are being eaten alive by tech platforms profiting from other people’s content and everyone seems to acknowledge that except Marcus,” he said.
“AAP’s predicament was caused by organisations choosing to either reduce or cut completely the amount of money they were prepared to pay for the AAP newswire.”
One of those news companies was, according to Reid, The Guardian.
“Marcus’ statement appears to be in response to reports in The Guardian,” Reid continued.
“For The Guardian to peddle the theory that the newswire was cut in order to punish them is gobsmacking hypocrisy.
“It is one of the very companies that slashed the amount it was prepared to pay for AAP. It is one of the organisations whose decisions have contributed to the closure of AAP.”
Guardian Australia editor Lenore Taylor flatly refuted those allegations, stating Reid’s statement was based on “false premises”.
The Guardian’s Taylor
“I understand we were offered a discount by AAP when we renegotiated last year because we were using fewer services as we expanded our own reporting teams,” said Taylor, who penned an opinion piece yesterday lamenting the loss of the AAP and the impact of digital platforms on such media businesses.
“Our monthly fee was reduced in line with a reduction in our content quotas. We didn’t ‘slash the amount we were prepared to pay’, we were offered a discount because we were using fewer services.”
https://twitter.com/lenoretaylor/status/1235679316505026560
https://twitter.com/lenoretaylor/status/1235679095653978113
Reid added that both The Guardian and MEAA “should confront the bigger, tectonic forces our entire industry faces rather than trot out this arrant nonsense”.
“To preserve a vibrant Australian media industry and to prevent more losses then we need the federal government’s proposed codes of conduct between the tech giants and publishers to deliver a genuine framework that means these tech companies start paying for our content,” he said.
Taylor and The Guardian, in addition to MEAA, have been vocal about the impact of digital platforms on news businesses, including throughout, and in response to, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platforms Inquiry.
Yesterday, MEAA chief executive Paul Murphy also proposed levying the likes of Facebook and Google to fund journalism that would fill the gap left by the AAP.
“It is now urgent for the federal government to address the crisis in news media caused by the erosion of revenues through the proliferation of sharing content for free by the giant digital platforms and by the loss of crucial news coverage that was only available from AAP,” he said.
“This could be addressed by a levy on a percentage of the revenue digital platforms like Google and Facebook make from their use of news media content. The levy would then go to a Public Interest Journalism Fund that would help fill the void left by the loss of AAP and promote high quality journalism to ensure the public’s right to know.”
In response to Reid’s admonishment, the union reaffirmed that stance, with a spokesperson adding: “MEAA acknowledges the financial difficulties faced by all media outlets, including AAP, caused by the impact of digital giants undermining media revenues, which is why MEAA has publicly advocated, on numerous occasions to various inquiries into the media and journalism, a levy on Google and Facebook to fund public interest journalism.”
The AAP newswire’s last day will be 26 June.
Brittney Rigby was Mumbrella's deputy managing editor - news and analysis. She left Mumbrella in April 2021.
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Let’s keep close tabs on how many new staff News and Nine appoint to take up the significant slack caused by AAP’s demise.
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Or perhaps you keep tabs on all organisations who benefited from AAP, which extends well beyond Nine and News. Any media who reports news used AAP.
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…and presumably any media who used AAP would have paid for it?
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Media cannot be a profitable business by definition. Talking about it that way should cease. Then the conversation returns to whether we want to remain a democracy. And, if so, and by definition, a democracy requires a free media. A free media requires a government that makes emphatic decisions to protect its existence and to ensure its viability whatever that looks like…surely young, smart google and facebook businesspeople have a solution to this dilemma? Surely they don’t begrudge paying young journalists to slog it out covering our courts and sporting games and parliaments to ensure we remain a fair and strong democracy. Or are they suggesting anarchy is Australia’s future?
They surely know the accuracy and dynamism in content that invigorates their platforms (and makes them advertising dollars) costs money. Journalists hardly get paid a kings ransom (like techies and gamers and lawyers). So get on with a business model that solves the funding challenge and stop squabbling about it. An exciting world is being subsumed by this quibbling over who said what and who has the moral high ground when in fact, if we value our freedoms and the 4th Estate is a long recognised part of establishing and securing those freedoms, we know this dilemma needs an answer and soon. It seems dopey business practice to deconstruct a long established organisation like AAP only to realise you will need to reconstruct it elsewhere — a bit like constantly paying stamp duty and lawyers and real estate agents as you buy and sell houses until you find your perfect home. Can Australia’s best minds please spare a thought for the orderly business of budgeting responsible media into our democratic profit and loss sheet?
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Well said , but whilst the 2 giants are making 100’s of millions, getting ‘free local
content’ and even then not paying a fair and proportional amount of tax I cannot see a change. Time to stand up Google and Facebook and be part of a solution otherwise future is all a bit shitter.
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Journos are paid a lot like gamers actually. The vast majority get no money for their work (here I’m including bloggers/tweeters/etc as journos), while a few get paid a moderate amount and a tiny minority are well paid.
Of course journalism can be profitable. Just reprint media releases and add ads. It works really well for Facebook.
There are other paths to profitable journalism too.
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