Digest 9/8/2020

How an Australian regulation could help newspapers take on Facebook and Google; Janet Malcolm on trial; succession at the New York Times

FACEBOOK VS. AUSTRALIA

In Australia, backlash from Facebook and Google against possible governmental regulations could have dramatic impacts on the future of news organizations in the country. It could also potentially set an international precedent on the relationships between the tech giants, news publishers, and governments. 

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, a regulatory arm of the Australian government under the Treasury, introduced a plan in April that would require Facebook and Google to pay media organizations for use of their content, essentially sharing the ad revenue they earn from the outlets. Exact amounts would be negotiated between the publishers and the tech companies, and the code would allow media companies to bargain as a group. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg called on the ACCC to develop the plan when COVID hit news companies hard, ad revenue plummeted, and dozens of newspapers were forced to shutter while hundreds of journalists were furloughed or laid off. 

Facebook and Google, predictably, aren’t thrilled with the idea. Google has put out alarmist messages telling consumers the code would “force Google to provide you with dramatically worse products, could lead to your data being handed over to big news businesses, & may affect your ability to use these free services.” Facebook has chosen the nuclear option, threatening to block Australian Facebook users and media companies from sharing news on the platform (and on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook) if the ACCC plan becomes law. What’s remarkable about this response is that publishers have not yet even demanded a specific figure, but would simply be given a seat at the table to negotiate fees with Facebook.

Last year, Facebook and Google raked in a combined $4.97 billion in advertising revenue in Australia — about $400 million more than five of the country’s major news outlets put together. Still, the tech giants claim they in turn bring hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to the news outlets through clicks and referrals, explained David Swan, technology editor at The Australian. The tech companies have shown no signs of budging from their refusal to pay fees, but the ACCC doesn’t seem likely to back down, either.

“The sides have been too far apart for too long, and I don’t think either will concede,” Swan told me. “The federal government, too, seems emboldened by both Google and Facebook’s tactics, and is now redoubling its efforts to get this regulation passed. What happens next will help shape the news and tech industries in Australia, and, I think, globally.”

Governments around the world will be watching how the Australian situation shakes out and may, depending on the outcome, use it as a blueprint in attempts to regulate the tech giants in their respective countries. In the US, both Facebook and Google have faced antitrust probes, and there has been talk of breaking up Facebook — Elizabeth Warren even made it part of her platform while vying for the Democratic nomination. The Australian legislation could set a precedent, and that’s why Facebook is now lashing out, said Swan. 

“I think this is an incredible test to see whether Facebook and Google are more powerful than governments,” Swan said. “Apple is worth more than $2 trillion, for example, which is more than the GDP of most countries. The tech giants have been growing in power and influence for a long time now, and this regulation is a real test case of if the likes of Facebook can truly serve the interests of users, or if their own power is more important.” In other words, is it more important to Facebook that users see good journalism, or is the tech company consolidating its monopoly the only thing that matters?

I asked Swan what he thought would happen if Facebook were to really ban news content on its platforms. He said larger organizations would likely be fine, but the ban would have an outsized impact on smaller, local outlets. “Independent voices, whether that be blogs, student publications, or rural outlets, rely more heavily on traffic from the likes of Facebook,” he explained. “These websites often don’t have a paywall, don’t have a large audience going directly to their homepage, and would likely suffer significant drops in traffic.” 

There could potentially be some upsides for the media system if the ban were to go through, he said, but the dangers to the public likely outweigh them. “A benefit here…could be that a news-free Facebook would likely force Australians to be more deliberate in how they consume news, and then support publications more directly,” Swan said. “It would also force the publications to be more canny and strategic about how they build their readerships and charge for their content.”

Beyond the health of news organizations, there is something else at stake in the regulatory battle: the quality of information readily available to Facebook users. Facebook is already notorious for being especially welcoming to the far right and historically lax on moderating potentially dangerous content. If reputable news sources are no longer shareable on the platform but misinformation from users persists, that could be bad news for the country’s information ecosystem as a whole. 

“Australia needs less misinformation not more, and the reality is that Facebook is going to be a large part of Australians’ information diet for a long time to come,” said Swan. “It’s therefore Facebook’s responsibility to make sure it features plenty of real, verified, news. Not less, or none at all.” 

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LONGREAD OF THE WEEK The New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm’s most famous line might come from the opening of her book The Journalist and the Murderer: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.” Malcolm elaborated on the “morally indefensible” art of journalism in a new essay for the New York Review of Books, recounting when she was sued by a profile subject. She makes a rare admission: New Yorker writers of decades past were accustomed to “collaging” long monologues from their subjects, patching pieces of different interviews together. “Not everyone liked the convention, but no one thought it was deceptive, since its artificiality was so blatant,” Malcolm writes. Twitter is having a field day with this! What could be better than a legendary writer admitting she basically made things up!? But Malcolm’s essay is not confessional; it’s about the basic ambiguity of nonfiction and the ways in which all writing is just a skewed portrait. The artifice is the point. More intriguing is her evocation of how the rarified New Yorker writers carried themselves back then: “The idea was to be reticent, self-deprecating, and, maybe, here and there, funny, but to always keep a low profile, in contrast to the rather high one of the persona in which we wrote.” — Kyle Chayka 

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EVERYTHING ELSE

— BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti announced that salary reductions the company implemented in April as part of pandemic-era cost-cutting measures will come to an end on September 16! The BuzzFeed News union has questioned whether the success of the temporary reductions means employees who were laid off earlier this year could’ve kept their jobs. 

— Here’s a little Media Twitter Discourse recap: Miranda July’s effusive reaction to E. Alex Jung’s profile of her in Vulture led to some criticism over whether a subject should like their profile and a broader discussion of what a profile should do. I think most would agree it depends on the subject — if you’re profiling someone who wields a lot of power, they should certainly be held to account — but it also raises the issue of access journalism in celebrity coverage. For better or worse, flattering profiles are more likely to garner more access. (But what even qualifies as a “flattering” profile??? I’m already exhausted.) 

— Mina Brewer, the model whose image was used on the cover of The Atlantic to accompany Jesse Singal’s widely-panned fearmongering story on transgender kids, has spoken out against the magazine for misgendering him on the cover (Brewer now uses he/him pronouns and used they/them pronouns at the time of the photoshoot — she/her pronouns are used in the cover copy) and initially underpaying for a cover shoot.

— The Kenosha Times editor Daniel J. Thompson, the only full-time Black staffer at the paper, quit his job last week after the paper ran an inflammatory and misleading headline about a rally for Jacob Blake. The headline quoted the one call for violence from an unnamed speaker, while the rally was peaceful and characterized by speakers calling for unity, including Blake’s father, Thompson said.

— Here’s a wild profile of The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown, who just released a classical music album for children called Wild Symphony, which a lawsuit filed by Brown’s wife (they are separated) claims he hid from her, thus misrepresented their assets. Per the Times profile: “She also alleged that he led ‘a secret life’ for years, hiding an affair with a Dutch horse trainer and concealing lavish purchases he made for his mistress, including two Friesian horses, one of them named Da Vinci.” Rich people!!!! The fucking best.

— Don’t ever say the Biden-Harris campaign doesn’t know how to appeal to the youths!! Your characters on Animal Crossing: New Horizons can now decorate their yards with Joe Biden signs, available for download via the Nintendo Switch Online app. (This still won’t save capitalist bastard Tom Nook when the revolution comes.)

— Who will be the next editor of the New York Times? As of late last year, it reportedly came down to managing editor Joe Kahn, former Opinion editor James Bennet, and Metro editor Cliff Levy. But now, after the upheaval following that ill-advised Tom Cotton op-ed and Bennet’s resignation, the question of who will succeed Dean Baquet is anybody’s guess. Vanity Fair found that a few additional employees have recently received thorough performance reviews, stirring gossip they might be in the running: national editor Marc Lacey, deputy managing editor focusing on business coverage Rebecca Blumenstein, assistant managing editor Carolyn Ryan, and Steve Duenes, who focuses on visual journalism.