Rehabilitate the Media’s Power
That day, along with Senator Amy Klobuchar, Kennedy submitted a draft of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act to the United States Senate.
That day, along with Senator Amy Klobuchar, Kennedy submitted a draft of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act to the United States Senate. An initiative that is relevant to the media industry in Indonesia today.
In what ways are Google and Facebook "countries"? In terms of the dominance of global internet governance, their business penetration and political operations that transcend territorial and nationality boundaries as well as the magnitude of scale of their economies rival the scale the economies of the countries. In terms of capability, they are able to conduct surveillance like a state intelligence agency and influence internet users around the world.
In this framework, Google and Facebook can no longer be seen as companies. They are giant companies with operational scope and range of influence beyond "normal" boundaries. Therefore, regulatory adjustments are needed to overcome the impacts that may appear.
The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act was born in that framework. The locus of regulation is the distribution and monetization of journalistic content involving press companies on the one hand and search engine and social media platform companies on the other.
David against Goliath
There are several important things in the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. First, the importance of press companies negotiating collectively with platform companies. Under the United States Antitrust Law, press companies cannot collectively negotiate with Google and Facebook.
As soon as they try to negotiate collectively, the press companies will be accused of being a cartel. Meanwhile, if negotiating individually with Google or Facebook, press companies are generally in a powerless position. Like David against Goliath.
Google and Facebook indeed have the status of a company. However, they have the financial capability, technological capacity and operational range that are stronger than that of press companies combined. Google and Facebook are the true monopolists of the distribution of journalistic content. Therefore, press companies need exceptions to negotiate collectively with them even though this is contrary to the Antitrust Law.
The main issue is how media publishers and digital platforms can share the journalistic content, advertising revenue and user behavior data fairly.
The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act intends to enforce the exception for four years. Negotiations are mainly intended to protect the rights of publishers over the use of the journalistic content. The main issue is how media publishers and digital platforms can share the journalistic content, advertising revenue and user behavior data fairly.
Second, the dominance and ambiguity of the platform companies\' position are related to the distribution of the journalistic content produced by media publishers. In the past decade, the number of online news readers in the United States increased by 200 percent. However, the income of online media companies even dropped by half. This happens because online news is generally read through indirect access through the mediation of search engine or social media platforms, the main intermediaries for news distribution. However, they are still "referees" as well.
They determine how readers can access and interact with the online news media. Platform companies also unilaterally determine conditions for online media that want their news to appear in search listings. In practice, online media then compete to gain indexes and traffic created by platform companies. The referees are decisive in the arena of competition among online media.
The next problem is that internet companies do not only become referees, but also players. They also hunt for traffic, advertising revenues, and user-behavior data on the same field. As referees and players, the platform companies control and manage the distribution of content and advertising.
Ambiguity also occurs in the context of competition for digital advertising expenditure. Platform companies on the one hand position themselves as partners who technologically mediate publishers to achieve advertising in programmatic advertising schemes. As partners, in the case of Britain, internet companies get up to 40 percent of the value of advertising transactions that publishers get. On the other hand, platform companies are the players who control the largest portion of digital advertising spending. Ambiguity as partners as well as a competitors make the platform companies powerful against media publishers (The Cairncross Review, 2019).
Conversely, digital platforms continue to grow and dominate the media market.
Third, the issue of injustice in monetizing journalistic content. The publishers are of the view that internet companies have achieved economic and political advantages over the content they produce. The content is generally aggregated and distributed without taking into account the issues of trademark, product attribution, copyright and transparent profit sharing. Changes in public media behavior bring disruption that undermines the viability of conventional media. The prestige of conventional media continues to fade. Conversely, digital platforms continue to grow and dominate the media market.
The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act is an effort to put the brakes on the gap, not by ignoring the contribution of the digital platform to the democratization of the realm of communication and information but by creating a business climate that allows digital platforms and media publishers to live side by side and support one another. The law wants to create a healthy and fair business climate in the media field. The problem is the duopoly practice of Google and Facebook over the distribution of journalistic content and digital advertising spending.
The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act is supported by the News Media Alliance, a media association of more than 2,000 publishers in the United States, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
Fourth, the facts show, social media has not been able to replace the position of conventional media as a civilized public space. Without prejudice to its deliberative role, social media has instead developed into a forum that ignores the standards of decency and public ethics.
Social media develops not only as a means of articulation of freedom, but also a means of spreading prejudice and hatred. Conventional media do have many weaknesses. However, the weakness is controlled by the legal and ethical system that has been institutionalized. Meanwhile, for the social media, institutionalization has not yet been sufficient.
In this context, rehabilitating the viability of conventional media is important for maintaining a democratic ecosystem. The issue of media sustainability is as important as the issue of upholding the ethics of the press. Creating a healthy media business climate is an important part of the nation\'s democracy project.
Differences in interests
The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act is interesting to consider in the Indonesian context. However, we also need to pay attention to objections to such a regulations. Efforts to reduce the gap between the platforms and publishers have been carried out by the European Union in the Copyright Directive 2001.
With the title “Publisher\'s right”, Article 11 of the European Union Copyright Directive states that social-media platforms, news aggregators or search engines must obtain publisher permission before utilizing the publisher\'s journalistic content, in part or in whole, including in presenting news excerpts (news snippets) by search-engines.
The Guardian once stated, "The enforcement of publisher rights in article 11 of the EU Copyright Directive can confirm the legal status of publisher\'s high-quality journalistic works". Article 11 facilitates publishers to demand economic compensation for journalistic content that is used by search engine platforms, news aggregators and social media.
On the other hand, platform companies criticize the law. Google considers the Copyright Act to be counterproductive to public space and reduces public access to journalistic content.
On the other hand, platform companies criticize the law. Google considers the Copyright Act to be counterproductive to public space and reduces public access to journalistic content. The application of snippets tax to aggregators is feared to reduce the incentives for aggregators to provide services that give new ways for publishers to spread news quickly.
Objection also arises from small publishers. They feel to have been benefited by the existence of search engine and social media platforms. They get traffic, can distribute news cheaply and effectively interact with the public. For small publishers, traffic seems to be more valuable than the monetization of journalistic works shared by the platforms (The Cairncross Review, 2019).
The initiative of the life-power institutionalization of the mass media needs to be a starting point for starting the same thing in Indonesia. We are quite late in this matter. However, criticisms and objections that arise must also be considered.
Agus Sudibyo, Head of New Media Research Center ATVI Jakarta; Member of the Press Council