Facebook Inks Deal With News Corp, to Pay for Content in Australia

The three-year deal comes after Australia passed laws aimed at making tech platforms pay for news content.

Giving in after a long battle, Facebook has agreed to pay Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for journalism from its local publications in Australia.

(Photo: iStock)

Giving in after a long battle, Facebook has agreed to pay Rupert Murdoch's News Corp for journalism from its local publications in Australia.

The three-year deal comes weeks after the Australian government passed laws which aim at making tech platforms pay for news content.

A statement from News Corp said that the agreement involves News Corp Australia and includes The Australian national newspaper, the news.com.au news site, major metropolitan mastheads like The Daily Telegraph in New South Wales, Herald Sun in Victoria and The Courier-Mail in Queensland, as well as regional and community publications.

At the same time, Sky News Australia, part of News Corp, has also reached a new agreement with Facebook which “extends and significantly builds on” an existing arrangement.

News Corp said that the deal follows an agreement reached in October 2019 in which the company’s publications in the United States receive payments in exchange for access to additional stories for Facebook News.

“The agreement with Facebook is a landmark in transforming the terms of trade for journalism, and will have a material and meaningful impact on our Australian news businesses. Mark Zuckerberg and his team deserve credit for their role in helping to fashion a future for journalism, which has been under extreme duress for more than a decade,” said News Corp Chief Executive Robert Thomson.

Meanwhile, Campbell Brown, Facebook’s vice president of global news partnerships, said in a statement, “We’re glad to have this deal in place and look forward to bringing Facebook News to Australia.”

News Corp’s Deal With Google

The deal comes close on the heels of a deal between Google and News Corp for three years, under which the tech company has agreed to pay the media conglomerate for news on its platform during that period.

The deal came after years of public feuding between Murdoch and Google, most recently in Australia, where Google has threatened to shut down its search engine to avoid “unworkable” content laws.

News publishers, especially smaller publishers across the world, have seen advertising revenues take a severe hit as digital platforms like Google and Facebook share news content on their platforms, earn revenue and also dictate the availability and reach of news content produced by traditional media houses.

News Corp has long spearheaded a campaign in Australia to make politicians to push tech firms pay for news content from its sites.

Facebook agreeing to pay News Corp shows a change in its position, as shortly after the News Corp-Google announcement, it said it would no longer carry any news content in Australia because of that same new bargaining code. The social media platform’s decision then stood in contrast to Google’s as it immediately stripped all news content from Australia in a dramatic escalation of its campaign.

The company already has a deal with Apple to provide access to journalism and related content for a potential audience of millions around the world.