SYDNEY: Australia finalized plans on Tuesday to make Facebook and Google pay its media outlets for news content, a world-first move aimed at protecting independent journalism that has been strongly opposed by the Internet giants.
Under laws to go to parliament this week, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the Big Tech firms must negotiate with local publishers and broadcasters how much they pay for content that appears on their platforms. If they can’t strike a deal, a government-appointed arbitrator will decide for them.
“This is a huge reform, this is a world first, and the world is watching what happens here in Australia,” Frydenberg told reporters in the capital Canberra.
“Our legislation will help ensure that the rules of the digital world mirror the rules of the physical world ... and ultimately sustain our media landscape.”
The law amounts to the strongest check of the tech giants’ market power globally, and follows three years of inquiry and consultation, ultimately spilling into a public brawl in August when the US companies warned it may stop them offering their services in Australia.
Facebook Australia managing director Will Easton said on Tuesday the company would review the legislation and “engage through the upcoming parliamentary process with the goal of landing on a workable framework to support Australia’s news ecosystem.”
A representative for Google declined to comment, saying the company had yet to see the final version of the proposed law.
Until recently, most countries have stood by as advertisers redirect spending to the world’s biggest social media website and search engine, starving newsrooms of their main revenue source and bringing widespread shutdowns and job losses.
But regulators are starting to test their power to rein in the two mega-corporations which take more than four-fifths of Australian online advertising spending between them, according to Frydenberg. This year, a French regulator told Google to negotiate with publishers over payment for news content, and the matter remains before the courts.
“It’s both very ambitious and very necessary,” said Denis Muller, an Honorary Fellow at University of Melbourne’s Center for Advancing Journalism, referring to the Australian law.
“Taking their news content without paying for it, in exchange for a very questionable reward of ‘reach’, seems to be a very unfair and uneven and ultimately democratically damaging arrangement.”
News Corp. Australia executive chairman Michael Miller said the law was “a significant step forward in the decade-long campaign to achieve fairness in the relationship between Australian news media companies and the global tech giants.” In May, News Corp. stopped printing more than 100 Australian newspapers, citing declining advertising.
In changes to draft legislation announced earlier this year that might favor the tech companies, the final version of the law would not affect news content distributed on Facebook’s Instagram subsidiary or Google’s YouTube. Facebook and Google would also be allowed to include in the negotiations the value of clicks their platforms directed to news websites.
But Frydenberg added to the list of media companies with whom the tech giants must negotiate, saying public broadcaster the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and specialist public broadcaster SBS would be included, along with dominant private sector outlets like News Corp. and Nine Entertainment Co. Holdings Ltd.
Australia to make Facebook, Google pay news outlets for content
https://arab.news/29s94
Australia to make Facebook, Google pay news outlets for content
- ‘This is a huge reform, this is a world first, and the world is watching what happens here in Australia’
Study finds nearly half of UK news stories on Muslims show signs of bias
- Centre for Media Monitoring finds 20,000 out of 40,913 articles from 30 major news outlets contain bias and 70% link Muslims to negative behaviors or themes
- Findings reveal ‘deeply concerning evidence of structural bias’ in portrayal of Muslims by UK press and point to ‘systemic problem’ within the media, says center’s director
LONDON: Nearly half of news articles published in the UK in 2025 that referenced Muslims or Islam contained some degree of bias, according to a report issued on Monday by the Centre for Media Monitoring. It also found that about 70 percent of stories linked Muslims to negative behaviors or themes.
The nonprofit organization, which tracks the ways in which Muslims and Islam are portrayed in the media, examined 40,913 articles from 30 major news outlets and found that about 20,000 showed some form of bias.
The study looked at “structural patterns” in coverage that “shape public narratives” about Muslims amid rising hostility toward the community.
“As the largest study of its kind ever conducted in the UK, this report presents deeply concerning evidence of structural bias in how Muslims are portrayed in the UK press,” said Rizwana Hamid, the director of the organization.
It found that 70 percent of the articles it reviewed highlighted negative aspects related to Muslims, though not all of the stories were biased in themselves. The wider patterns were also troubling: 44 percent of the coverage omitted key context, 17 percent relied on generalizations, and 13 percent included outright misrepresentation.
Taken together, the monitoring center said, the findings amounted to evidence of an “information integrity crisis” that distorts public understanding, and “a deeply concerning trend” in reporting on Muslims.
The research points to a “systemic problem within our media ecosystem,” Hamid said.
“When entire communities are repeatedly framed through lenses of suspicion or threat, it inevitably shapes public attitudes, political debate and the everyday lives of British Muslims,” she added.
News brands targeting right-wing audiences were more likely to produce biased coverage, the report found.
The Spectator magazine and GB News were identified as having the highest proportion of “very biased” articles, and as the “worst across all five bias categories”: negative framing, generalizations, misrepresentation, lack of context, and problematic headlines.
Other outlets highlighted for displaying high levels of biased content about Muslims included The Telegraph, The Jewish Chronicle, Daily Express, The Sun, Daily Mail and The Times.
In contrast, the BBC, other broadcasters and left-leaning outlets recorded the lowest rates of bias in the study.
The research comes as British Muslims report rising levels of discrimination. Official figures published in October revealed that religious hate crimes against Muslims rose by 19 percent in the year to March 2025 compared with the previous 12 months.
