Business - Companies
Updated: March 16, 2021

Facebook Signs Deal To Pay News Corp For Content

By Oluwatosin Ogunjuyigbe
March 16, 2021
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Three weeks after the government passed laws that would make digital giants help cover the costs of journalism, News Corp and Facebook have reached pay deals for news in Australia, ending a battle between two billionaire-owned empires being watched worldwide as a possible template for regulating Big Tech.

News Corp Australia announced on Tuesday it had signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Facebook for use of news articles from publications such as The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, and the Herald Sun and videos from Sky News Australia.

The Rupert Murdoch-controlled publishing outfit said a landmark three-year agreement with Facebook to pay for its Australian content will transform the terms of trade for journalism. The pay deal follows a similar agreement struck with Google last month.

“[Facebook CEO] 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,” News Corp Chief Executive Robert Thomson said. “Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch led a global debate while others in our industry were silent or supine as digital dysfunctionality threatened to turn journalism into a mendicant order. This digital denouement has been more than a decade in the making.”

Andrew Hunter, head of Facebook News Partnerships in Australia and New Zealand, said the agreements with News Corp Australia and Sky News Australia “mean that people on Facebook will gain access to premium news articles and breaking news video from News Corp’s network of national, metropolitan, rural and suburban newsrooms.”

Facebook has also reportedly made a confidential deal with Nine Entertainment, Australia’s biggest locally-owned media giant, but the parent company won’t confirm an agreement has been reached.

Other outlets such as Guardian Australia and the ABC are still negotiating how much money they should receive, according to people familiar with the confidential discussions.

Facebook has been trying to strike commercial deals with large media outlets for use of news articles for several weeks to avoid being punished under new media bargaining laws.