By William Turvill, PressGazette, May 18, 2023
The head of Canada’s news industry trade body has told publishers in other countries not to be “intimidated” by threats from Google and Facebook as more jurisdictions pursue legislation to force the duopoly to pay for news.
As the Online News Act has made its way through Ottawa’s parliament, Google and Facebook have both issued stark warnings to Canada’s politicians and publishers. Google has experimented with blocking some users’ access to news, while Facebook has said the bill could force it to remove news from its platforms in Canada.
But Paul Deegan, the president and chief executive of News Media Canada, which represents 560 publishers, is confident the tech giants will come to recognise it is in their “self-interest” to retain news on their platforms.
Speaking to Press Gazette’s Future of Media Explained podcast, Deegan said he expected the Online News Act to pass into law by the end of June. Asked how he expected Google and Facebook to react, Deegan said: “It’s hard to predict what they’ll do, and these are businesses – they’re going to have to make business decisions on how they’re doing to deal with it.
“But we believe it’s in their self-interest to have news content on their platforms.”
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