Digest 12/7/2020

Facebook and Google to pay publishers, The Crown controversy, and more.

FACEBOOK AND GOOGLE TO PAY PUBLISHERS ACROSS THE GLOBE — BUT NOT IN THE USA

When Facebook launches a new tab for curated news stories in the UK this coming January, it will also begin paying news publishers to license their content. According to a report in The Guardian, some publishers will make millions from the deal, and Facebook is expected to shell out tens of millions altogether. Notably, the new policy will not apply to content shared by Facebook users in their normal feeds — only content curated into the news tab by contractors hired by Facebook will be paid. But it’s a pretty significant concession by the tech giant. In August, an Australian regulatory body proposed a law that would make tech giants Facebook and Google pay media companies for content, and Facebook’s initial response was threatening to block news from being shared on the platform in that country.

Some version of the legislation is moving ahead in Australia, but with a recent major concession to the tech giants: Facebook and Google will determine how much money they pay media organizations by counting the monetary worth of the readership they deliver to news sites, a number determined by clicks (meaning the entities will now likely have to battle it out over that age-old question, the value of a click).

In France, Google has struck a deal with news publishers that will result in the tech giant paying about 150 million euros over the next three years to license content. Google has long resisted shelling out any money at all to publishers, fearing it would set a costly precedent, so it’s a big deal that they’re agreed to anything at all. Similar to the UK deal, it will apply only to content appearing on a news tab-esque product called News Showcase, which publishers will have the ability to opt into. It was important to Google that the structure of the deal not look like a gift or a subsidy. 

Considering how historically reluctant Facebook and Google have been to pay media companies for use of their content at all, these developments mark significant shifts in the way tech platforms deal with news publishers. There seems to be a heightened mainstream awareness not only of how much money these platforms siphon from media companies, but also how much the platforms depend on media companies to fill their feeds. Publishers made this argument in the negotiations over the French deal: that the news business helped make Google what it is; that Google is, in a way, beholden to news publishers; but the company has consistently taken a large chunk of ad revenue from them without offering much in return. 

Dan Froomkin of Press Watch noted that a similar deal in the US would yield a little over half a billion dollars for publishers. That wouldn’t fix the news business, but it might be a start at repairing some of the damage wrought by tech companies. It seems unlikely the US would follow the UK’s example, however. The US government has shown itself to be reluctant to regulate tech giants in any way; over the summer, a congressional antitrust hearing focused on Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon was derailed by Republican accusations of bias against conservatives. A real bipartisan effort to put some brakes on big tech is not on the horizon. 

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THE CROWN AND CREATIVE LIBERTY

Season four of The Crown is reportedly ruffling feathers among the royal family and friends with its less-than-flattering portrayal of Prince Charles and his romance with Princess Diana. The prince and the royal family on the whole come across as cruel, indifferent to Diana’s suffering, and content to use her as a publicity pawn while Charles continues his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles. UK Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden even requested that Netflix label the show as a work of fiction at the beginning of each episode so viewers’ perceptions of the royal family would not be swayed by the work. 

Netflix has said it has no plans to do so, noting it trusts viewers to understand the show is based on real people and true events but is largely fictional. A palace source, speaking to the Mail on Sunday, called the season’s portrayal of Charles, Diana, and Camilla “trolling with a Hollywood budget.”

The show’s creator, Peter Morgan, hasn’t tried to pass off his work as documentary — he has stated on The Crown official podcast (yes, there is an accompanying podcast) that he made up certain details in the show that have angered palace sources. He also defended taking creative liberties in producing the drama. But critics are responding to a real sense of authoritativeness that comes, in part, from an attention to detail that has rendered other aspects of the drama — the sets, the costumes, the way the characters speak — eerily accurate. Many episodes end with photos of the actual people on which the characters are based and updates on their lives, creating the impression that what we have just watched is close to reality. 

One such epilogue followed an episode about Michael Fagan, the unemployed painter who broke into Buckingham Palace in 1982. In the show, he is presented as a political seer who entered the Queen’s bedroom to talk about the destructive consequences of Margaret Thatcher’s policies; the Queen is shockingly sympathetic and receptive to what the stranger in her bedroom has to say. 

In reality, Fagan was almost immediately escorted out and never exchanged words with the Queen. He didn’t break in to deliver a political message, and it seems unlikely the Queen was moved by the incident. In this instance, Morgan’s departure from the historical record makes the Queen more sympathetic and interesting than she likely is in real life. The same could be said for scenes in which she spars with Thatcher, often taking up the cause of the working class. But royal sources aren’t complaining about these creative liberties!

It raises the question of the extent to which we expect journalism from a biopic, whether we want to be told the truth or told a story. I asked myself the same question when watching David Fincher’s Mank over the weekend, a film that contends that screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz actually penned Citizen Kane, not 25-year-old boy genius Orson Welles — a claim that has been debunked by scholars. But it occurred to me that the film’s portrayal of events, anchored in Mankiewicz’s perspective, is likely how Mankiewicz himself saw it, and thus expresses a personal truth.

Similarly, The Crown’s version of events, however exaggerated, are probably not far from the truth of how it felt to certain members of the royal family — Diana in particular. Not to get all college-student-taking-literary-theory, but isn’t the way something feels its own kind of truth? The more interesting story is often what it was like in someone’s head, not necessarily how actual events played out with perfect historical accuracy.

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EVERYTHING ELSE

— A new piece in GQ documents the fall of the fashion blog Repeller (formerly Man Repeller). Ultimately, the site was felled by a decline in sponsored content posts, but employees say there was trouble behind the scenes long before the abrupt closure, some of which played out publicly (like when founder Leandra Medine Cohen posted a cringeworthy blog apologizing for falling short on matters of racial justice while posting Instagram telling people how to be anti-racist, prompting Black employees to share how they had been undervalued at the company). Yikes, basically.

— Nick Thompson is leaving WIRED after four years as editor-in-chief of the magazine and 15 years at Condé Nast to take on the role of CEO of The Atlantic. The move is representative of a power shift from the century-old luxury publisher to newsier, subscription-driven companies like The Atlantic and The New York Times. 

— Bon Appétit just can’t stop getting in its own way!! Last week it posted a recipe mislabeled as soup joumou, a squash stew with historical roots in the Haitian Revolution, with a shared byline from Marcus Samuelsson, Tamie Cook, and chef Yewande Komolafe — but Komolafe subsequently said in an Instagram post that she had not written the recipe, and had only been involved in the Samuelsson book it came from in its early stages. The Bon Appétit page has been updated with a correction, identifying the dish more accurately as “pumpkin soup with spiced nuts,” and apology. 

— The Intercept met with some of its freelancers and partnered with the National Writers Union to produce a list of principles that will consistently be applied to its dealings with freelancers. It’s all pretty standard stuff that should apply to every freelancer-publication relationship — like having the terms of an assignment laid out in a contract — but it should be helpful to have it all in writing.