‘Google made easy’: Why media professionals oppose California’s new journalism bill

Google will soon give California millions of dollars to help pay for local journalism jobs in the first deal in the country, but journalists and other media industry experts are calling it a disappointing deal that greatly benefits the tech giant.

The deal, negotiated behind closed doors and announced this week, will direct tens of millions of public and private dollars to maintain local news organizations. Critics say it’s a book political scheme by tech executives to avoid money under what would otherwise be illegal. California lawmakers agreed to kill a bill that would have required technology to support for-profit news outlets in return for Google’s financial commitment.

By vetoing the bill, the state effectively abandoned a path that would have required Google and social networks to make ongoing payments to publishers for linking to news content, said Victor Pickard, a professor of news policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania. California also left the largest amount of money available under the law, he said.

“Google happened easily,” Pickard said.

Google said the deal will help both journalism and the artificial intelligence industry in California.

“This public-private partnership builds on our long history of working with journalism and the local news system in our country, while developing a national center of excellence in AI policy,” said Kent Walker, president of global affairs and chief legal officer at Google. Parent company Alphabet, said in a statement.

State governments across the US have been working to help boost struggling news organizations. The US newspaper industry has been in decline for some time, as traditional business models collapse and advertising revenue dries up in the digital age.

As news organizations have moved from print to more digital, they have become increasingly reliant on Google and Facebook to distribute their content. While publishers have seen their advertising revenue grow exponentially over the past few decades, Google’s search engine has become the centerpiece of a digital advertising empire that generates more than $200 billion a year.

The Los Angeles Times was losing up to $40 million a year, the newspaper’s owner said in justifying the layoffs of more than 100 people earlier this year.

More than 2,500 newspapers have closed since 2005, and nearly 200 counties across the US have no local news, according to a report from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

California and New Mexico fund local news programs. New York this year became the first state to offer a tax credit program for news outlets to hire and retain journalists. Illinois is considering a bill similar to the one that died in California.

Here’s a closer look at the California deal struck with Google this week:

What does the agreement include?

The deal, worth up to $250 million, will provide funding for two efforts: funding for journalism programs and a new AI research program. The agreement only guarantees funding for a period of five years.

About 110 million dollars will come from Google and 70 million dollars from the federal budget to improve journalistic activities. The fund will be administered by UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Google will also invest $70 million to fund an AI research program, which will build tools to help solve “real-world problems,” said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who brokered the deal.

The deal is not a tax, a sharp departure from the bill Wicks sponsored that would have imposed a “link tax” that would have required companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft to pay a certain percentage of advertising revenue to media companies to link to their content. . The bill was modeled after a policy passed in Canada requiring Google to pay about $74 million a year to fund journalism.

Why are tech companies admitting this now?

Tech companies have spent the past two years fighting Wicks’ bill, launching expensive opposition campaigns and running ads attacking the law. Google threatened in April to temporarily block news websites from search results for some California users. The bill continued to advance with bipartisan support — until this week.

Wicks told The Associated Press on Thursday that he doesn’t see a path forward with his bill and that funding from the deal is “better than zero.”

“This must be politics is the art of the possible,” he said.

Industry experts see the agreement as a playbook that Google has used around the world to avoid regulations.

“Google can’t get out of news because it needs it,” said Anya Schiffrin, a Columbia University professor who studies global news and co-authored a working paper on how much Google and Meta owe news publishers. “So what they’re doing is using a lot of different tactics to kill bills that will require them to compensate publishers properly.”

He estimates that Google owes California publishers $1.4 billion a year.

Why are journalists and labor unions against this agreement?

The Media Guild of the West, the union that represents journalists in Southern California, Arizona and Texas, said the journalists were locked out without an interview. The union was a champion of Wicks’ debt but was not included in the negotiations with Google.

“The future of journalism should not be decided by private agreements,” reads the union’s letter sent to lawyers. “The Legislature started an effort to control the governance of workers but it failed miserably. Now we ask whether the state has done more harm than good. “

The deal results in a very small amount of funding compared to what Google gives newsrooms in Canada and goes against the goal of rebalancing Google’s dominance over local news organizations, according to a letter from the union to Wicks earlier this week.

Some also questioned why the deal included money to build new AI tools. They see it as another way for tech companies to eventually take over. Wicks’ original bill did not include AI provisions.

The agreement is supported by several journalist groups, including the California News Publishers Association, Local Independent Online News Publishers and California Black Media.

What’s next?

This agreement is scheduled to go into effect next year, starting with $100 million to start these efforts.

Wicks said the details of the deal are still being worked out. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has promised to include journalism funding in his January budget, Wicks said, but concerns from some Democratic leaders could challenge the plan.

This story has been updated to correct that, along with Southern California and Texas, the Media Guild of the West represents journalists in Arizona, not Nevada.

– Trân Nguyễn, Associated Press