Rod Sims, the outgoing boss of Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission, made pointed accusations about Google’s ‘anti-journalism’ sentiment and efforts to avoid legislation that would compel the tech giant to negotiate with news outlets.
The comments can be found in this article, published earlier this week, by the Sydney Morning Herald.
He adds that without the creation of the country’s news media bargaining code, tech giants, such as Facebook and Google would not have agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to local publishers for use of their content.
“What they’re saying clearly is they don’t want to pay money to the current media companies, which employ journalists, they would rather get information from companies that aren’t media companies, perhaps individuals who aren’t journalists,” says Sims in the piece.
“The threat to democracy would come if we play journalism out of providing news…if most news came from sources other than journalists. That would be what undermines democracy.”
