Last Updated on February 18, 2021
NewsCorp, the parent company of Fox News, has struck a wide-ranging three-year deal with internet giant Google to provide news content from several of its heavyweight news organizations.
The announcement indicated that NewsCorp would provide content from its premium content providers, including the US entities The Wall Street Journal and New York Post, as well as the Times and the Sun in the UK, and The Australian and Sky News down under.
The deal between NewsCorp and Google covers both audio and video products. News Corp will also get a share of ad revenue generated by Google’s market dominating AdSense.
The move suggests that the parent company to Fox News joined with Google to prematurely submit to increasing pressure from Australian lawmakers who believe Big Tech giants like Facebook and Google are profiting off the journalistic work of outside news organizations without paying for the content that draws users.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp said it reached a three-year pact with Google under which the publisher will provide news content from sites worldwide to the internet giant in return for “significant payments by Google" https://t.co/gFzZ84vm6s pic.twitter.com/AiNqA3WLLn
— Yahoo News (@YahooNews) February 18, 2021
The News Corp-Google content partnership comes on the heels of Australian government introducing legislation that introduces a framework for Australian news outlets to enter binding negotiations with organizations like Google, Twitter, and Facebook. In response to the legislation from Australian, Facebook banned Australians from reading news on their platform.
The News Media Bargaining Code, introduced in July, gives eligible news outlets and the social media giants a three-month period to negotiate. If negotiations stall, the legislation mandates the matter be taken to an independent arbitrator.
The arbitrator – just as in binding arbitration in American baseball – would have the authority to impose an agreement, meaning both parties would submit their best offers, and one will be selected by the independent arbitrator.
Google just announced a deal with News Corp. I hate this. It means that media blackmail works. It sets a terrible precedent for the net. It gives Google yet more power over news. It is a win for the devil, Murdoch. I really hate that.
— Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) February 17, 2021
Recently, Facebook took a more confrontational approach to the Australian’s News Media Bargaining Code law, banning Australian users of its platform from viewing news content that originated from outlets outside of the Facebook corporation.
Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, called Facebook’s decision “arrogant,” warning that he regularly converses with world leaders, who are all ready to act against an overbearing Big Tech presence with regulation.
“Facebook’s actions to unfriend Australia today, cutting off essential information services on health and emergency services, were as arrogant as they were disappointing,” Morrison said in a statement.
“These actions will only confirm the concerns that an increasing number of countries are expressing about the behavior of Big Tech companies, who think they are bigger than governments and that the rules should not apply to them,” he said.
“They may be changing the world, but that doesn’t mean they run it,” he added.
Facebook responded to Australia's proposed Media Bargaining law by restricting its Australian users from sharing or viewing news content. Google opted for making a deal with News Corp to display news. Here is how everything started: https://t.co/RnT3IOAFE0
— WIRED (@WIRED) February 17, 2021
Regarding the News Corp-Google deal, Robert Thomson, News Corp’s CEO, said the agreement would have “a positive impact on journalism around the globe as we have firmly established that there should be a premium for premium journalism.”
“I would like to thank Sundar Pichai and his team at Google who have shown a thoughtful commitment to journalism that will resonate in every country,” Thomson said in a statement Wednesday.
Google has been increasingly criticized for kneeling to the will of the Communist Chinese leadership in Beijing on the issue of overt and blatant censorship.
In 2018, it was exposed that Google created a version of its search engine specifically for use in China. The build would censor content according to the desires of the Chinese Communist Party leadership.
Google tasked a select group of engineers to work on the project. It was codenamed “Dragonfly.”
Several middle and high-ranking Google employees pointed out their express concern about the project and how it would enable the Chinese Communist government to further control and oppress its people. Several of those employees resigned.
The Communist Chinese government has come under extreme pressure from the world community recently for the revelation that they are committing genocide against the Uyghur people in their Xinjiang province.
Reports have emerged – and eyewitness testimony has been given by survivors, that the Chinese government has erected concentration/re-education camps in Xinjiang.
Guards at the slave-producing facilities have been reported to routinely engage in the gang rape of the Uyghur and Kazakh female inmates, sometime sexually brutalizing them with electronic batons.
The slaves produced by these concentration camps are shipped around the country as slave labor for China’s “stakeholder” hybrid capitalist system.
Spokespeople from NewsCorp and Google were unavailable for comment on how their “journalism” project would cover the ongoing genocide.
