The media should expose their own lobbying!
The Post headline:
This was a law to legalise theft where tech companies would be forced to fund media companies, on the basis that people now choose to advertise on Facebook and Google rather than in the print classifieds!
Google and news publishers were given a private look at the Government’s proposed changes to the law that would have made tech giants pay for New Zealand journalism before those changes went to Cabinet, briefing papers show.
So no favouritism – both sets of stakeholders were given a look at proposed changes. This is entirely normal.
A month later, Google put out a public statement threatening to stop linking to NZ news sites if the bill passed.
“This bill proposes a ‘link tax’ that would require Google to pay simply for linking to news articles. While Google supports efforts to foster a sustainable future for New Zealand news, this bill is not the right approach,” Rainsford said at the time.
NPA public affairs director Andrew Holden then accused Google of “corporate bullying” and said its position deliberately misrepresented the legislation.
“The bill is not a tax; it creates the environment for New Zealand media companies to sit down and have a proper commercial negotiation with big tech companies about their use of our journalism.”
Very Orwellian. The NPA claiming it merely creates an environment to negotiate. Bullshit. It was indeed a law that would require tech companies to fund media.
He also later said it was shelved because of concerns over how US President Donald Trump would react, telling Parliament: “As is highly obvious to everybody, circumstances changed somewhat at the end of 2024 with the US presidency changes, and a more cautious approach was adopted.”
Donald has his uses.
The real story here should be an expose of how the media companies forced Melissa Lee out of office because she refused to tax Google to fund them, and then carried on an aggressive lobbying campaign with the new Minister who also went along with their plans, until Donald stopped them.