‘Really hard to fathom’: Calls for government to intervene on Meta’s news ban as industry reels from redundancies
As the media industry continues to be hit by more and more redundancies on the back of Meta’s news ban, will the Australian government step in?
On a new episode of the Mumbrellacast, hosts Neil Griffiths and Adam Lang reflected on another round of redundancies, this time coming from publications such as Refinery 29, Vice, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, and Kotaku, after Pedestrian Group announced the “tough decision” to transition out of its current brand licences on Monday.
Media giants Seven West Media and Nine Entertainment, as well as News Corp Australia, have been rolling out redundancies over the last few weeks, which are attributed to Meta axing news from its platform. As noted by Capital Brief this week, The Daily Aus and Broadsheet Media have also warned that half of their revenue would be hit if Meta’s news ban moves on in a submission to the government’s committee on social media.
Lang questioned the role that the government could play in the situation.
“Will the government intervene? [Meta has] said the money’s not coming. They’ve stopped supply of money. They don’t want the news in Facebook anymore,” Lang said.
“So we know that money’s gone. Will it come back? That depends on what the government chooses to do. And if so, over what timeframe do they execute that?”
Lang suggested that journalism is “at the sharpest end of disruption” given the Meta news ban and the bargaining code and that it is inevitable the industry will be hit with more job losses.
“How that plays out is, is really hard to fathom,” he said
“What point that might change? Gee, I don’t see that one changing quickly. I think that will take many months to resolve. And that means unfortunately, probably redundancies in the short term.”
Listen to the full episode here.
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Two main issues here:
– tax reform (multinationals paying their fair share of tax, of which they currently don’t)
– whether the government wants a powerful media sector (what government want to be held accountable)
Solving point A, could allow point B to subsidised. This could then be fairly applied rather than going to the big dinosaurs who have failed to innovate and have squandered the cash injection that was given to them in the first round of media bargaining code. This would allow for voices and stories of all backgrounds to be told in Australia.
This day was ALWAYS coming and it is arrogant to think that the platforms wouldn’t eventually stand up and push back.
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“Buggy whip company insists car companies subsidise them”
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If only the dinosaurs found another way to amplify their reach (just like they all claim in their pitches)
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Government intervention makes things worse. Stop asking ‘the government’ to fix issues. They never have, and never will
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@NotMeta – Yeah imagine that! It would be like taxi companies insisting Uber subsidise them! Oh wait, that does actually happen via a tax on Uber trips…
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Govt will cry foul but change nothing – including continue to be one of Australia’s largest advertisers with Meta.
They could easily redeploy some of that spend with AU publishers and support AU owned media….
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hahahahahahahah
Dead set deflection tactic from the publishers.
How did they survive the previous 6 decades?
Complete and utter mismanagement, C Suites getting paid way too much money to do sweet FA.
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Time for a Meta Tax!
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