New Delhi: The News Broadcasters Association (NBA) has written to Google highlighting an urgent need to create an equitable relationship and a level playing field between global tech monopolies and traditional media/news organisations.
The development comes days after Australia passed a law requiring Google and Facebook to pay media companies for content. Apart from Australia, the tech giant has also agreed to compensate and pay publishers in France and the European Union.
In a letter addressed to Google India country manager Sanjay Gupta, NBA president Rajat Sharma said the advertising revenues which form the backbone of the news broadcasters have been shrinking in the digital space since technology giants are taking away the major chunk.
“News organisations make heavy investments in employing anchors, journalists and reporters to gather, verify and deliver credible information but are inadequately compensated — the largest share of advertising revenue flows disproportionately to intermediary technology platforms. Google plays a key role in this value chain as an intermediary and plays a part in delivering this news content to its audiences albeit without sufficiently compensating the content owners,” the letter reads.
One of the largest self-regulatory bodies for TV news channels in the country, the NBA noted that the present situation reflects the unfair distribution of advertising revenues which is causing the digital news businesses to come under tremendous pressure.
“Being a multinational organisation following global best practices in all the countries it operates, the expectation is that Google will employ principles of universal parity in dealing with news content owners and employ similar norms in India,” the letter read, highlighting that countries like Australia, France and other European countries have already taken the lead in addressing this power imbalance through legislative enactments which ensure that the tech giants adequately pay news publishers for their highest quality news content.
The NBA requested the tech giant to urgently look into the matter and examine the issues at play to ensure the ecosystem remains sustainable. “We would be happy to have a meeting through VC in this regard,” wrote Sharma.
Last month, the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) had also asked Google to pay Indian newspapers comprehensively for the use of their content and to share details of its advertising revenue and demanded that publisher’s share of advertising revenue be increased to 85 per cent.
