Last week, a Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society issued a much-anticipated interim report containing 11 recommendations related to digital platform accountability and news policy in Australia. The Committee was appointed by law earlier this year to report on the influence and impacts of social media on Australian society. Given that U.S. policymakers look to Australia’s approach to news policy as a potential model, we wanted to highlight some of the recommendations.
Support Public Interest Journalism Through a Digital Platform Levy
One recommendation that has created a lot of buzz among those that study news policy is that the government should impose a ”levy” (that is, a tax) drawn from the revenues of certain digital platforms to support public interest journalism and improve media literacy. They also recommended that the government develop mechanisms to ensure “fair and transparent” distribution of the tax revenue, with a focus on small, independent and digital-only publishers, as well as those operating in underserved communities and rural, regional and remote areas.
The Committee’s recommendation for a levy as an alternative revenue mechanism to support journalism was grounded in their view that Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, the model for Canada’s Online News Act as well as the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) in the U.S., has a “fundamental problem.” That is, the Code presumes that digital platforms want or need to carry news to provide a service. But both Meta and Google have downplayed the economic value of news on their platforms. To prove the point, Meta has broken links to news in Canada, signaled their intention not to renew commercial agreements with publishers in Australia, and threatened to break news links in Australia if they are “designated” and therefore forced to forge agreements with publishers under the Code. (Google also “tested” removing links to news on its platform when a similar proposal was imminent in California.) The Joint Select Committee therefore referred to the nexus between journalism and commercial arrangements with digital platforms under the Code as “broken.” They recommended against designating Meta under the Code after hearing from digital publishers that designation might not only be ineffective but actually do harm if Meta blocked news as it did in Canada.
The Committee’s recommendations, including their focus on transparency and small publishers, threw into relief the different interests within the news industry. Australia’s Public Interest Journalism Initiative, a nonprofit focused on “a sustainable future for public interest journalism,” welcomed the recommendations. So did the Digital Publishers’ Alliance, which represents 120 independent news outlets. But the major beneficiaries of the News Media Bargaining Code, NewsCorp, Seven West and Nine, have objected to the Committee’s recommendation for a levy and advocate for first designating Meta under the Code. It’s unclear how they would manage Meta blocking links to news in Australia, as happened in Canada.
That scenario may bring us to the most alarming recommendation in the report: to “investigate the viability and effectiveness of ‘must carry’ requirements for digital platforms.” We have written about “must carry” requirements in the context of the JCPA before: We strongly oppose them on constitutional and other grounds. In fact, we highly doubt they would pass muster in the U.S., particularly in light of recent Supreme Court decisions about the right of platforms to decide how to moderate the content they carry. (“Must carry” requirements also have an odd “editorial independence for me but not for thee” quality coming from news advocates.) Luckily, the Joint Select Committee noted that there may well be “legal or regulatory barriers to such a requirement” in Australia, as well.
We have consistently supported the notion of a levy on digital platforms to support local news, and we are not the only civil society organization to do so. Our version, the “Superfund for the Internet,” incorporates a federal user fee based on the number of monthly active users of a platform. We’re aware of other, similar proposals from economists, academics, politicians and civil society organizations over the past few years. We also support the deliberate focus on small, independent, and digital-only publishers and underserved communities rather than legacy business models and national outlets. We would welcome the opportunity to work with Congress to evolve and develop this proposal.
Direct Government Support for Underserved Communities
The Joint Select Committee recommended that the Australian government establish a short-term transition fund to help news publishers develop new revenue streams. This “bridge” between Meta’s commercial deals and the design of a levy would also be particularly focused on small, independent and digital-only publishers, and those operating in underserved communities and rural, regional and remote areas. In fact, Australia’s Communications Minister almost immediately announced that the government would release $15 million in “urgent funding” to be distributed among regional and community news outlets with revenue under $30 million.
We believe in the premise behind the recommendation, which is that news is a public good that warrants appropriately-structured government support. This must include careful design of fund governance, editorial independence, political firewalls, and allocation transparency, among other stipulations.
Establish a Dedicated Digital Regulator
The Joint Select Committee recommended that the Australian government establish a Digital Affairs Ministry “…with overarching responsibility for the coordination of regulation to address the challenges and risks presented by digital platforms.” This, too, is a recommendation we can get behind; Public Knowledge was the first to cover the benefits of a dedicated digital regulator for the United States. The Joint Select Committee notes, “because matters relating to the regulation of social media are broad, the new Digital Affairs Ministry should be given an equally broad remit so that it can regulate matters such as, but not limited to, privacy and consumer protection, competition, online safety, and scams.”
We have long advocated that the way to break down the outsized control of Big Tech over our information systems is through a combination of policies: antitrust enforcement and competition policy to allow more new entrants; national privacy regulation to undermine the dominant platforms’ data monopolies; a dedicated regulator to sustain these solutions; and smart news policy. We welcome these recommendations and ideas to advance the discussion.