Report from the Toronto Star
In Brief – The Canadian Journalism Collective, an organization that is distributing some of the funds contributed by Google to pay Canadian news media outlets in exchange for Google being exempted from the media payments scheme created by the Canada’s Online News Act, has announced that they have distributed the first $22 million provided by the online giant. Broadcasters will reportedly receive about 30 per cent of the $100 million per year from Google, while publishers will split the remainder. Qualifying news organizations had to meet several criteria including that they must operate in Canada, have two or more journalists in the country, and be a member of a recognized journalistic association or follow a journalist code of ethics. Canada’s payments regime, which compensates media companies when their news content appears on very large search or social media platforms, currently applies to Google and Meta, but Meta chose to block Canadian news on Facebook and Instagram to avoid having to make payments.
Context – In 2023, Canada was ground zero in the global campaign by media companies to have governments push the largest digital platforms to pay them. The most interesting development was the policy divergence between Google and Meta. Google agreed to make media payments while Meta chose to block news rather than pay a government-set rate for media content. In 2024, the two companies pursued their separate paths in California, and Meta also announced that they would stop media payments in Australia, which was home to the first media payments scheme in 2021. The Australian Government responded to Meta’s plan to stop paying by threatening to enact a new tax in 2025 on large social media companies that won’t voluntarily pay media companies, meaning Meta. One of the Trump Executive Orders threatens trade retaliation against foreign governments that employ taxes or regulations that are “designed to transfer significant funds” from American tech companies to a “favored domestic entities”, which very likely includes the national forced media payments schemes.