It's been a big week in the world of social media. Twitter is still convulsing over mass sackings, resignations and technical fiddling after Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform some 3 weeks ago. And META, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has moved on boss Mark Zuckerberg's belief that there’s no money to be made in news. There’ve been hundreds of job losses.
One META redundancy that’s made heads turn is that of International News Partnerships which oversees the platforms relationship with news organisations. In the US where deals between Meta and news organisations are of a different nature to those here in Australia, the cull is sending a strong message that META isn’t as interested in news as it once was and indeed, the company has said explicitly its shifting resources to what it considers ‘high growth areas’, and news isn’t amongst them. Having removed news items from its Australian feed during negotiations for the introduction here of the News Media Bargaining Code (NMBC) in 2021, META has been sending signs it might do the same in Canada, where similar legislation looks close to being enacted.
META’s shift in priorities is bad news for the Australia news businesses that signed three-year deals with the platform after the NMBC came into effect. Many have been on hiring sprees, and it’s fair to say there’d be a lot of nervous editors and journalists waiting to see whether their 3-year contracts with the social media giant will be renewed. Sounding confident, News Corp’s Executive Chairman Michael Miller says META had given no indication it wouldn’t renegotiate. And the retention of META’s Asia Pacific Director of News Partnerships, Andrew Hunter is a good sign, though that too could be to wind down expectations.
Keep reading because we’ve been up to a lot in the past few weeks. Derek is back from the International Institute of Communication's conference in Ottawa and writes about discussions there of the efficacy of an independent fund to support public interest journalism as an alternative to the NMBC here and the new legislation Canada is looking to pass. Stevie Zhang has been at a UNESCO conference in Bangkok where media literacy was front and centre and writes about some of the initiatives discussed there. And Michael has been pouring over the new Communications Minister’s recent speech on what the government has in mind for the media space.
Finally, the CMT held a two-day Tech Camp on our Sydney campus, bringing together journalists from all over the Pacific to talk disinformation and what to do about it. It was a huge success thanks to our Events and Communication Officers, Alexia Giacomazzi and Rosa Alice. Take a look here at the video we pulled together.
Read it now:
Monica Attard, Co-Director