Pay us for our news, ITV and Channel 4 tell Google

ITV and Channel 4 have backed legislation that could force big tech companies such as Google and Meta to pay media groups for news.

ITV, led by chief executive Dame Carolyn McCall, has warned that the sustainability of its journalism, which it said costs “well over” £100 million a year to produce, is at risk and that such laws “could have a considerable impact on the sustainability of news business models”.

Channel 4, whose chief executive is Alex Mahon, said the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill (DMCC) was essential to ensure “trusted news providers can engage with platforms on fair terms”.

Their interventions, joining several newspaper publishers, come as many media companies have been forced to make cutbacks amid a digital advertising slump. News companies across the world have said that Google and Meta — the owner of Facebook and Instagram — benefit from their content, which appears as headlines, written snippets and links, and should therefore pay for it.

Google and Meta have disagreed, claiming that news companies gain more benefit from their platforms, which link users to news websites and apps, than vice-versa.

Publishers say Google and Meta’s market dominance means they cannot fairly negotiate content licensing deals with them.

Google, Meta, Amazon and other tech companies have come to dominate the digital advertising market. In recent years, many news outlets have struggled to generate enough digital advertising income to make up for declining revenues from newspapers and television.

Reach, the publisher of the Mirror newspapers and many regional titles, cut hundreds of jobs last year. The Guardian told staff last month it may have to cut jobs as it heads towards a £39 million loss; and Channel 4 has announced plans to cut 200.

Several governments have built legislation intended to compel Google, Meta and potentially other tech companies to pay for news.

Australia enacted such legislation in 2021. The news media and digital platforms mandatory bargaining code is credited with prompting Google and Meta to strike multimillion-dollar news licensing deals with several publishers. Canada has introduced similar legislation.

The UK’s equivalent legislation, the DMCC, is making its way through Westminster. The bill is intended to regulate several areas of the digital ecosystem and will create “codes of conduct” for individual large tech companies, expected to include Google, Meta, Amazon and Apple.

In submissions to a House of Lords communications and digital committee inquiry into the future of news, ITV and Channel 4 backed the legislation. ITV said the bill could give publishers “the confidence to invest in digital distribution and ensuring that high-quality journalism could be supported for future generations”.

It said that addressing the relationship between news companies and platforms should be “prioritised in the implementation of the DMCC regime as soon as it goes into effect”.

Representatives of ITV and Channel 4 are set to appear before the Lords committee on Tuesday.