Last Wednesday, the California Legislature passed a $250 million transaction It has partnered with tech giant Google to fund local journalism and research into artificial intelligence. POLITICOThe bill seeks to “strengthen democracy and the future of work in a future of artificial intelligence through a public-private partnership between Google and the State of California.” While Canada, France and other countries have passed similar bills to fund their own newsrooms, California’s bill would be the first public-private partnership in the United States.
As demand for journalists declines and layoffs increase in the industry, Google will contribute $55 million to the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Journalism’s “News Transformation Fund,” and California taxpayers will contribute $70 million to fund local newsrooms over five years.
Rather than being charged for using local news outlets’ content, Google acts as a quasi-investor, potentially giving the company the power to champion the agenda of big tech companies by shaping coverage to fit its own narrative.
Google would also continue to provide $10 million in annual grants to news organizations, as well as millions more for an AI accelerator program that backers of the bill say will help journalists use and adapt to new technology.
“This agreement is a major step forward in leveraging the tech industry’s vast resources, ensuring the survival of news organizations across California and strengthening local journalism, all without imposing new taxes on Californians,” California Governor Gavin Newsom (Democrat) said in a statement. “Not only will this agreement provide funding to support hundreds of new journalists, it will help rebuild a strong, dynamic California news organization and strengthen the vital role of journalism in our democracy for years to come.”
But some worry that the current approach gives Google too much power, and that additional funding for AI programs could do more harm than good to journalists.
“The SEC has been working to improve the system,” said Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the Project for American Economic Freedom, a nonprofit that advocates for aggressive antitrust and antimonopoly policies. Threw some shade He called the deal “a backroom deal that’s bad for journalists, bad for publishers and bad for all Californians.”
Union leaders including the Western Media Guild and the News Guild-CWA also statement They released a statement titled “California Journalists Will Not Accept This Intimidation,” expressing their opposition to the bill, saying, “The future of journalism should not be decided by backroom deals.”
“After two years of advocating for strong anti-monopoly action to halt the decline of local newsrooms, we are largely at a loss for words,” they said. “Publishers who claim to represent our industry are celebrating an opaque deal that involves taxpayer dollars, a vague AI accelerator project that could devastate journalism jobs, and minimal financial commitments from Google to return the wealth this monopoly has stolen from our newsrooms.”
So far, Google has staunchly opposed each iteration of the bill. Claimed He warned that the bill “puts at risk the support of the news ecosystem. While the original bill would have required Google and other big tech companies to donate a portion of their advertising revenue to local journalists and newsrooms in exchange for content, the current version relies on public-private partnerships.
Jafar Zaidi, Google’s vice president of global news partnerships, said the previous bill “would create a ‘link tax’ that would require Google to pay just for linking Californians to news articles. If passed, this bill could mean big changes to the services we can provide to Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers,” Zaidi added.
So Google retaliated, temporarily Blocked And in response to similar laws in other countries, the company has copied its own tactics by blacklisting local media content from appearing in search results.
California has since given up on the bill, repealing the tax and replacing it with the current public-private partnership, which Google and other big tech companies have celebrated as a success, as the current bill effectively gives Google the power to influence local news media content in exchange for funding, further expanding the company’s monopoly power.
Rather than being charged for using local news outlets’ content, Google acts as a quasi-investor, potentially giving the company the power to champion the agenda of big tech companies by shaping coverage to fit its own narrative.
Kent Walker, president of global affairs and chief legal officer at Google parent Alphabet, praised California lawmakers and the tech news industry for working together to support local journalism. “This public-private partnership builds on our long history of working with local California journalism and the local news ecosystem to develop a national center of excellence on AI policy,” Walker said.
Similarly, Jason Kwon, chief strategy officer at OpenAI, said, “A strong press is a vital pillar of democracy. [OpenAI] We’re proud to be part of this partnership that will leverage AI to support local journalism across America.”
