SYDNEY: The head of Australia’s competition watchdog warned on Monday that tough new regulation of tech giants like
Google and
Facebook was needed to protect the future of independent journalism.
Rod Sims, chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (
ACCC), said the market power wielded by Google and Facebook has had a devastating impact on Australian news media.
While the number of journalists employed by Australian newspapers fell 20% from 2014 to 2017 as print advertising revenues dwindled, Sims said, Google and Facebook between them captured nearly 70% of all online advertising spend.
“This shift in advertising revenue online, and to digital platforms, has reduced the ability of media businesses to fund news and journalism,” Sims said in remarks prepared for delivery to Sydney's International Institute of Communications.
“We cannot simply leave the production of news and journalism to market forces,” added Sims, whose agency has been carrying out a lengthy probe of the impact of digital platforms on the news industry in
Australia. While the platforms capture the vast majority of advertising revenue, they do not create any original news, Sims said.
“Rather they select, curate, evaluate, rank and arrange news stories produced by third parties,” he said, noting that this market power increased the “risk of filter bubbles and unreliable news on digital platforms”.