This 'siphoning off' of advertising revenue by digital giants such as Google and Facebook, along with some of their other practices has escalated to a level where it's now being suggested that they now pay a 'levy on the operations of the largest digital intermediaries with the resulting funds redistributed to non-profit ventures with a mandate to produce original local or investigative news reporting.' The aim of this scheme is to be able to put at least in some sense, a stop to things like reduction in quality within journalism and combat against the loss of jobs within it. To get this potentially imposed, certain individuals (going from university lecturers to actual news editors themselves) are now backing an amendment going through Parliament to the digital economy bill just to get this cross-subsidy in place.
- 1% levy on the operations of the largest digital intermediaries with the resulting funds redistributed to non-profit ventures with a mandate to produce original local or investigative news reporting
I feel that this proposed amendment could do a good amount of help to the news industry as it is today. Particularly for more regional newspapers it would be of benefit and also investigative journalism which is something that's even deemed as a 'public good.' However before such a thing can actually be established in the first place, Parliament has to agree on it and observing whether they will or not will be particularly interesting. Not only this, but we can also anticipate opposition to this by 'the giants' like Google who will likely point to other factors that are causing the newspaper industry to slowly die out.
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