As scrutiny into the practices of large tech firms increases, the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee on Tuesday held a hearing on the impact platforms like Google and Facebook have on the media.
“All of these companies say the right things ー and they’ve put some charitable money behind trying to make publishers happy,” David Chavern, the president and CEO of the News Media Alliance, told Cheddar after testifying at the hearing. “We don’t need or want charity. What we want is a sustainable business relationship. And we haven’t gotten there yet.”
The News Media Alliance, formerly known as the Newspaper Association of America, is a trade association that represents about 2,000 newspapers in North America. Others who testified at the hearing included David Pitofsky, general counsel for News Corp and Sally Hubbard, the director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute.
At the hearing, lawmakers discussed the online advertising market, fact-checking, and fake news, among other topics.
Journalism, and even digital-first outlets, have for years struggled to sustain profitable business models. Outlets have typically relied on a combination of ad-revenue and subscriptions, but social media platforms and search engines, namely Facebook ($FB) and Google ($GOOGL), have forced publishers to compete with free content available across the entire internet, and not just their media peers.
Newsroom jobs have declined by nearly a quarter in the past decade, according to Pew.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that since the start of the millennium, newspaper industry jobs more broadly have been cut by half.
The power of tech platforms has motivated some politicians, and some journalists, to call for their breakup (though that may not be the only antitrust remedy available).
There’s also proposed legislation for the journalism industry specifically, titled the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, that would allow news organizations to organize collectively against large tech companies without facing pricing collusion violations themselves.
"Companies like Facebook and Google swallow up 60 percent of digital ad revenue, and so it doesn't leave much of the pie for the actual content creators, and for news publishers, which is why I got laid off in January, it's why local newspapers are going under," Laura Bassett, a former culture and political reporter for nearly 10 years at HuffPost, told Cheddar Tuesday.
The News Media Alliance has estimated that Google makes $4.7 billion from news every year, a number, which gained attention through a New York Times article just before the hearing.
But the Alliance’s calculations have faced pushback from media commentators and outlets like Nieman Lab and Intelligencer, since the eye-opening figure appears to be based on a single quote from 2008 from then Google vice president Marissa Mayer.
In an email to Cheddar, a Google spokesperson called these numbers “inaccurate” and “back of the envelope calculations.” The company argues that the study ignored what Google provides news sources, such as driving clicks ー Google says around 10 billion ー to publisher websites, which help develop outlets’ subscriptions and ad businesses.
“If you don’t like the study, there's two things that could happen. One, Google could actually — they have the information — they could reveal whatever they think the number is. Or, if somebody has a critique, talk about how else you could get at the number,” said Chavern. “But some of the critique seems to imply that we shouldn’t even ask, and I don’t get that at all.”
Andrew Cuomo is reportedly planning his comeback. According to the Wall Street Journal, the former New York governor and his aides are considering how to make his first public appearance since he abruptly resigned last August amid sexual harassment allegations. Jake Lahut, politics reporter for Insider, joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss Cuomo's potential return to politics.
The pressure is on for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson - after his closest aides handed in their resignations this week.
It comes after a report found that 16 parties had taken place at Downing Street while Covid lockdown protocols were in place in the region. Ari Aramesh, Attorney & National Security/Foreign Policy Analyst joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss.
President Biden has ordered about 3,000 U.S. troops to Eastern Europe as Russia refuses to back off its pressure on Ukraine. The deployments to Poland, Germany, and Romania are a show of support to NATO allies concerned about a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is in addition to the 8,500 troops put on high alert. David Tafuri, former Obama campaign foreign policy advisor and former State Department official, joined Cheddar to discuss what this move means for U.S.-Russia relations.
After tennis player Peng Shuai made an explicit sexual assault allegation toward a former Chinese government official, she disappeared from the public eye. Her recent reappearance with the IOC alongside a Chinese Olympic committee official raised eyebrows and renewed concerns for her safety. Asian affairs expert Gordon Chang, author of "The Coming Collapse of China," joined Wake Up With Cheddar to discuss Peng Shuai's retraction and the various human rights controversies swirling at the Beijing games. "It's clear that the IOC was working with Beijing to make sure that she did not express herself freely," Chang said. "So really this is the IOC being complicit in these mechanisms of control over Peng."
The opening ceremony of the 2022 winter Olympics has kicked off at the Beijing national stadium. 150,000 spectators are in attendance for the games inside the 'closed loop' system separating Olympic personnel from the public. Cheddar News spoke with Brian Cazenueve, Sports Illustrated contributor, to share the highlights you may have missed and much more.
The Biden Administration is set to revise federal rules to address potential security risks from foreign-owned apps, mainly Tiktok. This comes after the White House opted not to pursue a forced shutdown of the Chinese-owned video sharing platform. Under these new rules, federal oversight would be expanded to explicitly include apps that could be used by foreign adversaries to steal or otherwise obtain data. Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Craig Singleton, joined Cheddar to discuss more.
Although this week's weather is predicted to be less severe than the 2021 storm, Texans are preparing for the worst - stocking up on supplies and emptying shelves in grocery stores, once again. Some Texans still have not recovered from last year's tragedy, and are heading into the next few weeks with anxiety for what's to come. Leslie Beyer, CEO of the Houston-based energy workforce & technology council, joins Cheddar News to discuss if the Texas grid will fail again.
Student loan debt continues to be a major concern for tens of millions of Americans who collectively owe about $1.7 trillion. Black college students often take on larger amounts of student debt in order to pay for a higher education. In turn, they are more likely to struggle post-graduation with repaying their debt, creating a racial wealth gap divide. Andre Perry, senior fellow at Brookings Institution joined All Hands to help break down the black student debt crisis.
After two NYPD officers were killed with an illegal gun, President Biden made a trip to New York City to speak on the issue of gun violence fed by the "iron pipeline" of illegal firearms that make their way from the South to the Big Apple. Kris Brown, the president of the gun violence prevention organization Brady United, joined Cheddar to discuss what this visit from the president could mean for the future of gun laws in America. "He's asked Congress to pass things like expanding the Brady background check system, but with the filibuster a barrier to so much action right now in the Congress, he's looking at solutions that involve funding at the federal level and really involve enforcement."
