PARIS: Alphabet unit Google has made commitments to resolve a dispute in France over copyright for content used online, the country’s antitrust authority said on Tuesday.
Google, owned by Alphabet, also dropped its appeal against a 500 million euro ($528 million) fine and paid it, the authority said.
The decision brings to an end its investigation against Google, which has agreed to hold talks with news agencies and other publishers to pay for the use of their news on its platform.
Google will commit to a remuneration proposal within three months of the start of negotiations, and if no agreement can be found the matter will be settled by a court.
The US company has also agreed to ensure that the negotiations will have no impact on the way the news is presented on its search pages.
The ruling comes as international pressure mounts on online platforms such as Google and Facebook to share more revenue with news outlets.
“The authority believes that the commitments made by Google have the characteristics to address the competition concerns,” it said in its ruling, which the head of the antitrust authority, Benoit Coeure, said would be closely examined by other European countries.
The ruling brings to an end a three-year-old case that stemmed from complaints from some of France’s biggest news organizations, including news agency AFP.
News publishers had argued that the rise of Google’s ad sales online was underpinned by the exploitation of excerpts of their news content online, depriving them of a potential revenue stream at a time of a decline in print sales.
The tech giant, which has since signed deals with several of the plaintiffs, initially rejected such claims, saying the web traffic it brought via its search engine and news aggregator steered a significant number of Internet users to news websites, thus allowing publishers to generate their own ad-based revenue.
AFP and several leading news organizations, including newspapers Le Monde, Le Figaro and Liberation, have since announced separate deals with Google, which are meant to cover this copyright law.
The terms of the deals have not been disclosed.
Google agreed to pay $76 million over three years to a group of 121 French news publishers to end the copyright row, according to documents seen early last year by Reuters. ($1 = 0.9471 euros)
Google resolves French fight over payment to publishers
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Google resolves French fight over payment to publishers
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.
