Liberal Party announces plans to ‘Level the Playing Field with Digital Giants’ (News Media Canada)
The Liberal Party of Canada has announced it is committed to ‘Level the Playing Field with Digital Giants’ as well as providing other support measures for journalism in the event they are re-elected in the upcoming federal election.
In their platform announcement, the Liberals committed to introduce new legislation, within 100 days of taking office, that would require digital platforms that generate revenues from the publication publication of news content to share a portion of their revenues with Canadian news outlets.
This legislation would be based on the Australian model and level the playing field between global platforms and Canadian news outlets. The bill will also allow news publishers to work together to prepare for collective negotiation.
Politicizing pharmaceuticals and other commentary (New York Post)
The recent op-ed published by News Media Canada chair Jamie Irving and president and CEO Paul Deegan garnered the attention south of the border. The New York Post republished some of the biting commentary on how the ‘Australian model’ protects journalism and democracy from Tech Giants, such as Facebook and Google, from profiting off content from trusted news outlets while driving polarization.
Misinformation on Facebook got six times more clicks than factual news during 2020 U.S. election, study says (Washington Post)
A new study of user behaviour on Facebook around the 2020 U.S. election found that the company’s algorithms helped fuel the spread of misinformation over more trustworthy sources.
The forthcoming peer-reviewed study by researchers at New York University and the Université Grenoble Alpes in France has found that from August 2020 to January 2021, news publishers known for putting out misinformation got six times the amount of likes, shares, and interactions on the platform as did trustworthy news sources.
