MELBOURNE, Australia – Facebook has agreed to pay Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for its journalistic content in Australia, a month after the social media platform temporarily blocked news links in the country due to legislation urging digital giants to compensate publishers.
The multi-year agreement, announced on Tuesday, includes news content from major conservative media in Murdoch, such as The Australian, a national newspaper, and the news.com.au newspaper, as well as other metropolitan, regional and community publications.
It comes a month after Google unveiled its own three-year global agreement with News Corp to pay for the publisher’s news content, and after Facebook, under heavy criticism, withdrew from its drastic move to share or watch of news links in Australia. .
Little details have been released, including how much Facebook News Corp will pay for the content.
News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson said in a statement on Tuesday that the deal, which he called a ‘beacon’, would have a significant and significant impact on our Australian news business. ‘
News Corp. leaders Thomson has led a global debate as the rise of the digital giants has impoverished the news industry. According to the agreement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his team helped shape a future for journalism, which is under extreme coercion. ‘
Critics, however, said the deal did not exactly guarantee the kind of journalism of public interest by the Australian government when the legislation, which was approved last month, was proposed.
“There is no guarantee that the public will benefit from it,” said Tanya Notley, a senior lecturer in communications at West Sydney University. The first major news companies to join Facebook were conservative and in line with the current government.
Others said it further highlighted the excessive power of social media companies to control news and public information. “They are the gatekeepers of the news for public consumption,” said Marc Cheong, who conducts research on digital ethics at the University of Melbourne.
In a statement, Facebook said the agreements would help people access news articles and newsletters from a network of national, metropolitan, rural and suburban newsrooms.
“We are committed to bringing Facebook news to Australia,” said Andrew Hunter, head of Facebook’s partnerships in Australia and New Zealand.
It was a distinctly different tone than the tech giant in February, when Facebook blocked news in Australia.
At the time, William Easton, managing director of Facebook Australia and New Zealand, commented on the draft Australian legislation: “The proposed law fundamentally understands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content.”
While the Australian government has pointed to the consolidation of spending on digital advertising in companies such as Google and Facebook, the tech giants say they are benefiting news companies by sending traffic to their websites.
Facebook has also announced tentative pay deals with independent news organizations, including Private Media, Schwartz Media and Solstice Media. But so far, it has only confirmed agreements with News Corp and Seven West Media, another major conservative news company.
Sky News Australia, which is also owned by Murdoch, has extended an existing agreement with Facebook.