Newspapers To Bid For Antitrust Exemption To Tackle Google and Facebook (cnbc.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The news industry is to band together to seek a limited antitrust exemption from Congress in an effort to fend off growing competition from Facebook and Google. Traditional competitors including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, as well as a host of smaller print and online publications, will temporarily set aside their differences this week and appeal to federal lawmakers to let them negotiate collectively with the technology giants to safeguard the industry. Antitrust laws traditionally prevent companies from forming such an alliance which could see them becoming over-dominant in a particular sector. However, the media companies will be hoping that Congress will look favorably on a temporary exemption, particularly giving the recent clampdown on the technology industry which saw Google slapped with a $2.7 billion antitrust fine. The campaign is led by newspaper industry trade group News Media Alliance and it is intended to help the industry collaborate in order to regain market share from Facebook and Google, which have been swooping in on newspapers' distribution and advertising revenues. The two companies currently command 70 percent of the $73 billion digital advertising industry in the U.S., according to new research from the Pew Research Centre. Meanwhile, U.S. newspaper ad revenue in 2016 was $18 billion from $50 billion a decade ago.

Comments

Better idea: punish Facebook and Google.

[wierd_w]

Allowing an excemption to antitrust rules is dangerous and stupid. If you have a problem with a powerful established competitor that is abusing a market dominant position, then seek antitrust against them. Dont abuse antitrust yourself.

But hey, maybe they know something the rest of us dont-- like how absurd it is to expect the congress cronies to actually give teeth to the laws on the books.

Re:Better idea: punish Facebook and Google.

[bluefoxlucid]

No, this is pretty much just communism in its murkiest still-identifiable form.

Essentially, Facebook and Google deliver information. People on Facebook need stuff to talk about, so they talk about common interests. This includes ... news. Google, of course, can connect anything you're asking about to the news that's probably why you're asking about it.

Now the newspapers aren't hot items anymore. People aren't buying newspapers, just like they're not buying physical CDs. In a generation, newspapers won't be a thing. There's all this online news from the likes of CNN and Washington Post, and it's being shared and commented on across all these Facebook feeds; you can't hold an argument in comments with strangers and friends on newspaper.

So the newspapers essentially are asking Congress to step in and change the market place. They want the government to decide what businesses should exist and, specifically, how people should get their news.

In our case, the government has limited power to try and shore up one industry and cut down another. The newspaper industry, of course, wants them to use what power they have to shore up newspapers and cut down online news. Part of that is the power to selectively exempt the newspaper industry from regulations which preserve capitalism from conglomerates of colluding market players who would otherwise work to shut out others from the market.

Re:Better idea: punish Facebook and Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that is the issue, Google and Facebook are not abusing their positions against the rest of the news industry. The rest of the industry is pissed that google doesn't shove eyeballs at their pay-walled news sites. https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Re:Better idea: punish Facebook and Google.

[The Grim Reefer]

In this case I think the news industry needs to put on their big boy pants and realize that nothing guarantees them that they can keep making profits on an old business model forever. It seems that any industry that gets entrenched (music, news, lots more examples) thinks that they then should have a right to keep profiting even if society or technology, etc. moves on. In this case, adapt or die. It seems ingrained that we always attempt to protect ourselves. I imagine when my company is pushed out by newer stuff / better stuff I will probably be the same way - "there outta be a law!". But from outside it seems silly to think that the current news industry should have a legal recourse to continue an old school profit train.

Well put.

How many other industries have been turned upside down due to new technology coming along to supplant it. I'm sure the wagon wheel makers would like to put a stop to the automobile, not to mention the stagecoach makers, and horse breeders. Oh, and the buggy whip makers. Typewriter manufacturers and repair men would like to put a stop to those newfangled computers too. Not to mention adding machine makers, who are in hot water with abacus builders. And the vacuum tube producers want to put a stop to transistors as well.

Re:Better idea: punish Facebook and Google.

[DarkOx]

Arguably, the newspapers are more monopolies than the tech companies. If you want major newspaper that covers Washington, and national news you have the WaPO to choose from, the NYT isn't really a substitute.

On the other hand if you don't like Google, there is Bing, and its an almost perfectly like substitute. If you don't like facebook there are a number of other conversation platforms like Disqus. While not perfect replacements they are social media alternatives.

Re:Better idea: punish Facebook and Google.

[polyp2000]

I think the UK is experiencing the same thing. This is why the government is in such a mess. The Eton educated, racist buffoons with their minority government currently havent got a clue what to do about it since their whole existence is founded on deceit and lies. Its harder for them to continue when people are able to do their own research instead of being spoonfed by the mainstream media.

Re:Better idea: punish Facebook and Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that the 'news' that Facebook and Google are 'providing' still comes largely from the newspapers. Neither Facebook nor Google actually gather and writes news. The only thing Facebook and Google are providing is ACCESS to the newspapers work, and Facebook and Google keep all the revenues from that work.

Re:Better idea: punish Facebook and Google.

[Rob Y.]

Did you read the article. it's not about the newspapers asking the Government to try to shore them up. It's about asking the government not to treat their own efforts to adapt to online news aggregation as illegal collusion under anti-trust law.

They've accepted that people aren't buying newspapers any more - that's not the issue. They know that people are still consuming news, and they're actively moving their businesses online to where the people are. But various aspects of how Google and Facebook present 'news' are making it hard to distinguish between real and fake news. Yes, they need Google and Facebook to link to their articles. But they'd like to figure out how to keep those articles from being lost in a soup of real and fake news. It's a real problem - that everyone would like solved. They just don't want well-meaning anti-trust law -
  intended to stop Standard Oil from colluding with its competitors to fix prices - to keep them from working together to solve the problem.

Re:Better idea: punish Facebook and Google.

[bluefoxlucid]

Industry groups work together to develop solutions to problems all the time.

The "Fake News" part of this is a red herring. There's lots of bullshit news. There's lots of bullshit news in print newspapers. There's lots of bullshit news on Fortune, Forbes, and WSJ. More to the point, that's not really what they care about; their entire argument is that their businesses are failing and they need to somehow keep themselves relevant, bullshit news or none.

What you describe suggests everyone wants to read these newspapers, but can't. The problem is most of everybody is more interested in their bullshit news. Whenever the real world tramples upon your little ideals, you have to reorient yourself emotionally. It's hard to go back and fix all the links to broken data; the brain doesn't want to expend that energy--and, besides, if you either just accepted when somebody told you you're wrong or sat down to verify that your head is indeed on straight, you'd do a lot of excessive thinking and your brain would find itself incapable of actually reasoning about anything--and so it responds to new facts conflicting established facts by shutting off the prefrontal cortex (reasoning) and activating the amygdala (emotion).

In other words: the natural, hard-coded response to learning that you're wrong is to throw a tantrum. Accepting that you might be wrong hurts.

Solution? Cake and donuts for every meal. People group together with like-minded folks who claim some facts are wrong and select the news that confirms this. Each group believes their news is right and the other guys's news is fake news.

So, again: the problem they're working together to solve is the one of not having enough revenue for themselves. Facebook and Google deliver information in aggregate form; a bunch of industry players want to get together and do the same, classing themselves as some sort of traditional selection. I don't believe such a strategic option necessarily must violate anti-trust laws, so it's fine they do that.

My point was that government deciding everyone is playing fair but we need to bend the rules to shore up $someone is basically government deciding on what consumers should consume--command economy. (Socialism is government owning the means to production; Communism ideals largely suggested that the people owned such things and the government handled instrumentation to get the most optimum outcome, which ... didn't work.) They're essentially asking the government to favor their industry for special reasons. There's also a reason I said it's the murkiest form of such things: we're not looking too far down the scale in that direction.

Re:Better idea: punish Facebook and Google.

[bws111]

As usual, when someone brings up buggy whip manufacturers they have completely missed the point.

Almost ALL of the news provided by Google and Facebook comes from the traditional news organizations (the ones you would like to claim are obsolete). The only thing 'new' is that some very large companies (google and facebook) have inserted themselves between the news organizations and their customers, and those companies keep most of the revenue generated by the news organzations work. That is not even remotely like buggy whip manufacturers.

Re: Better idea: punish Facebook and Google.

[cayenne8]

And apparantly distort.

ALL amps distort...the trick is to get one that distorts that is in a manner pleasing to the ear, with proper harmonics, etc...

Another idea...

[Pollux]

Newspapers still provide an important and valuable service to our society. They should be paid for it. Companies like Google and Facebook shouldn't be harvesting content for free. Setup a licensing deal with Google, Facebook, and any other meta-news distributors. Newspapers get money, and they continue to provide their services.

They should realize by now that the paradigm has shifted. People are consuming news content in new ways, and the best thing to do is adapt. Music's new distribution is streaming. News should be the same.

Re:Another idea...

[110010001000]

Yeah they should apply for an anti-trust exemption to let them negotiate collectively with the technology giants to safeguard the industry. You came up with a great idea!

Re:Another idea...

[DarkOx]

"They should be paid for it"

Wrong they should be paid for it if there is a market for it. If nobody wants a paper, than they should NOT be paid for it. If they don't want their content harvested they should put it behind a pay wall or not put it online at all. If the paywall means Google does not index them and put them near the top of the search ratings to friggin bad.

Ultimately Google will be hurt if they don't index the content and return the results people want. On the other hand maybe it will turn out the people don't care about reporting in the form of long form articles if that is the case the newspapers loose.

I would wager Google and Facebook have a bigger problem if they don't have those content sources than the papers have. If people want news they know where to look! Everyone has heard of the WaPo, Times, WJS, and their local Tribute, etc. If they can't get their news online or can't see any more than the headline without crossing the pay wall they will come crawling back most likely.

Re:Another idea...

[del_diablo]

I think thats a small and simple view of it. I guess Major Print Coalition(or whatever they could be called) is really really scared that at some point, Google or Facebook will look at them, and realize they source to Reuters or other such companies, and might attempt to kill them as middlemen.
Or they are scared that the decline in quality will eventually threaten their income for Physical papers, because it will kill of quite a bit of print and knowledge.

Not that anybody should really care, but USA is a huge marked, so its weird to watch further Monopoly actors trying to do something weird. From a foreign viewpoint, this is weird: As a foreigner who still lives in a nation where the idea is that certain things should be decentralized via state funding, so the Nation can survive getting dragged into another World War/super famine/system collapse. This state funded decentralization still includes physical newspapers, which is why it looks odd from our angle.

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In other news...

[dada21]

Major fast food restaurants want to regulate and sue the roads and highways for providing their customers easy access to the competition while not compensating the major fast food restaurants for existing on those roads and highways.

Why are they worried?

[fred911]

Someone still sells buggy whips.

Re:The funny thing is. . .

[DickBreath]

Google and Facebook are not redistributing anything. They are linking. Generating traffic. Maybe these news companies would like it better if Google and Facebook would never link to them ever again. We've already been through this game, more than once now, by several foreign news outlets that wanted Google to stop indexing them. Google stopped. Then those sites came back begging to be indexed.

These news organizations simply don't like the world that the 21st century has become. One where pretty much all the world's information is hyperlinked. If they don't want to be easy to find, it is to their own detriment.

Do these news companies think I am going to go to their site to browse for news if I don't find it linked from some other site first?

let's not forget

[ooloorie]

Washington Post: privately purchased by Bezos, one of the richest people in the world, politically active and advancing his political views and preferences through the media. Bezos also owns a company that completely dominates online shopping.

NYT: top shareholder is Carlos Slim, a Mexican billionaire with strong opinions on US politics, a major beneficiary from illegal immigration to the US, and a major Clinton supporter.

Bezos, WaPo, and the NYT symbolize what's wrong in American politics according to Democrats and progressives: foreign collusion, corruption of the political process by billionaires, and crony capitalism. And it's Democrats themselves that support these pricks.