How Google Will Distribute $100 Million to Canada's News Companies

In November Google agreed to pay Canadian news publishers $100 million annually "in order to be exempt from the Online News Act, which compels tech companies to enter into agreements with news publishers," writes the Canadian Press.

On Friday Google "named the organization it has selected to distribute the $100 million..." The Canadian Journalism Collective will be responsible for ensuring eligible news organizations get their share of the money. The collective is a federally incorporated non-profit organization that was created for this purpose. It was founded in May by a group of independent publishers and broadcasters... "We hope these next steps will be completed as quickly as possible, so Canadian publishers and journalists can soon begin to receive the proceeds of this new contribution model," Google said in a blog entry posted on their website Friday...

The money will be distributed proportionately based on how many full time-journalists the companies employ. Small print and digital outlets can expect to receive about $17,000 per journalist that they employ, an official with the Canadian Heritage Department has said.
Google's money will go to 1,520 news organizations, according to Google's blog post — which describes the arrangement as "addressing our concerns with the Online News Act" and "a viable path to an exemption at a clear and commercially acceptable commitment level..." As part of this transition, we have advised partners in our Google News Showcase program (our online news experience and licensing program for news organizations) will cease to operate in Canada later this year as we transition to this new contribution model. We will be maintaining some Google News Initiative programming in Canada. This includes a range of collaborative tools and resources that can support the advancement of quality journalism. However, with our monetary contribution in Canada now streamlined into the new single collective model, these investments will be non-monetary in nature.

The lion's share

[0xG]

Will go to Bell, Rogers, & CBC. Just watch.

CBC is taxpayer funded

[Anonymous Coward]

CBC should not receive any of this as it's a taxpayer funded organization. Their share should go directly to taxpayers.

Re:

[Jayhawk0123]

technically, CBC only gets 70% of it's funding from the government... of only $1.24 BILLION (/s)... and truth be told.. they should be getting most of that $100 Million as they actually do journalism and research... whereas Rogers, and Bell just hire pretty faces to repeat what others have actually done journalistic efforts on, run ads and make profit off of others effort... kinda like google. (guess they should be paying to others too)

But I'm curious, that's roughly $3 per person in Canada... how did goog

Re:

[Magic5Ball]

Google has at least 3 offices in Canada:
https://about.google/intl/ALL_... [about.google]

And probably a few more offices of tech companies owned by Alphabet or Google.

Re:

[Jayhawk0123]

Thanks, looks like the info i was going by was from 2017... weirdly, still couldn't find any info on how much they paid in taxes for operations in Canada. Guess they did a good job scrubbing that info.

These are not the financial models you are look...

[shanen]

I'll nibble at the bait. Are any of Bell, Rogers, or CBC worth a websearch?

Now for my actual reaction: "These are not the financial models for journalism you are looking for" with the usual apologies to Obi-Wan Kenobi. Actually I think the real problem is that "news needs to be free" and above the financial models. If you look at the history,, the entire idea of impartial journalism was an illusion created by government interference. Bandwidth (for radio and then for TV) was a valuable monopoly and part of

Re:The lion's share

[2TecTom]

Most will go to corporate media to sustain executive lifestyles and shareholders' dividends. Make no mistake, this is one part of the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

Re:

[timeOday]

Would you say that would be in-line or out-of-line with the number of clicks generated by each? That would be the market solution.

Unfortunately market-driven news mostly rewards hyperbole and commentary rather than real reporting, which is a difficult problem.

A Blessing and a Curse

[Press2ToContinue]

Google's $100 million deal with Canadian news publishers is a big help for an industry that's been struggling, losing many jobs and revenue. But it also means more influence from the government and big corporations on journalism, which could be a problem. Journalism needs to stay independent and unbiased, which might be a problem with such huge new funding.

Re:

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

Independent journalism is something that never happened.

Hiring people, printing and distributing paper, paying for radio and tv time, etc is not free. The money has to come from somewhere.

It originally came from the rich using newspaper as their personal PR/propaganda arm. Later on, during ww1/2, the government paid for tremendous amount of news which was more often war propaganda than anything else. Then new went corporate and anyone out to make money is worried about money first, independence isn't on

Re:

[groobly]

The money for newspapers came primarily from advertising. Craigslist and Google ate their lunch.

Re:

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

Yes, and owned by corporations.

You think anyone would advertise in a newspaper that did an ugly expose on the advertiser's industry, for example?

How independent is that?

Lies and bias and propaganda comes in all shapes, sizes and colors.

Re: A Blessing and a Curse

[ArmoredDragon]

I think it's worse than that. I think it will eventually reach a point where this organization decides who gets to even stay in business. Wouldn't be at all surprised if nepotism becomes the deciding factor.

Re:

[sinij]

for an industry that's been struggling, losing many jobs and revenue.

Independent journalism is doing just fine. Legacy media is struggling because they don't have any credibility and more they push the narrative, less people willing to listen to them.

Re:

[fluffernutter]

Where is there independent journalism that is not legacy journalism and how is it published?

Re:

[sinij]

Substack, locals, Youtube, Rumble just to name few. For example, I listen to Breaking Points [rumble.com] or Glenn Greenwald [rumble.com].

Re:

[fluffernutter]

I don't know a lot of those, but i know there is no journalistic integrity on youtube. All you can do on YouTube is try to look for sources that are trustworthy on YouTube so then you are back to the same problem. How are you able to confirm your other sources are confirming truth?

Re:

[sinij]

These are delivery platforms. While some, like YT, do some censoring others like Rumble do not. You pick specific channel or podcast and then evaluate it. Obviously, you have to make individual decisions. Ones I listen to tend to be reliable sources of information. I highly recommend Breaking Points for centrist-Left perspective. They are what The Atlantic used to be a decade or so ago.

Re:

[fluffernutter]

When I listen to news I look for an unbiased perspective. News that checks the facts twice and gives you what they found to be truth. That's what news is supposed to be. So when you say 'centrist-left perspective' already I consider that entertainment rather than news because they are trying to appeal to the audience. CNN is pretty much the same thing, as is Fox.. but just both ends of the spectrum. CNN is news porn for the left and Fox is news porn for the right. The only real news are organisations

Danegeld

[flyingfsck]

It looks like extortion to me.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

How does this government influence work?

I'm looking at similar schemes for e.g. distribution of music royalties, and they don't seem to result in government influence over the artform.

The Endangered News Act

[ArmoredDragon]

Ah, journalism. The innocent endangered species just the facts reporters that never have bias. Like that time all of those newspapers created a hoax about the public taking war of the worlds seriously in order to discredit radio as a medium.

And who can't forget Dan Rather, who made an active effort to derail two different presidential elections, the second time based on information he already knew to be inaccurate but used manufactured evidence to "prove" it, while burying evidence to the contrary that he already had but didn't bother to present on his so-called news show.

Oh and while I know next to nothing about Hunter Biden and his dumb laptop (really, I still to this day never read about what was supposedly on it, and I still don't even care) but what I found particularly interesting is apparently it was a real story, but rather than actually investigate it or even simply leave it alone, the majority of the media outlets actively made an effort to bury it.

You'll have to excuse me if I don't believe news outlets are deserving of handouts given they're not even the ones accurately recording history.

Re:

[timeOday]

I think reporting Hunter Biden as a big story with important implications for the Presidential Election is the biased stance. The man is not a candidate and hyping the story as if he were is a campaign tactic.

Re: The Endangered News Act

[flyingfsck]

The millions of dollars paid to the Bidens by foreign companies for no work performed is the real issue. Influence peddling is the worst corruption.

Re:

[SvnLyrBrto]

And just where *EXACTLY* is the evidence that any money paid to Hunter Biden found its way into Joe's hands or that Joe implemented any policies or legislation at Hunter's behest?

Except for Obama... and I freely stipulate that I may have missed some news there... every president during my lifetime has had at least one nere-do-well relative who's tried to enrich him or her self off the president's name. Carter had that brother and his beer. Reagan had a couple of nepo-baby "actors" and "talk show hosts" to

Re: The Endangered News Act

[ArmoredDragon]

That's fine. But that's no reason to make an active effort to bury it, or worse, just outright fucking lie about it. That flies right in the face of just reporting the facts, which is what they claim to do.

Re: The Endangered News Act

[OrangeTide]

Rudy Giuliani refused to give NBC and others a copy of the laptop harddrive. And refused forensic analysis. For the most part the Hunter Biden laptop issue is a story that the Trump campaign shops around to news agencies. And access to details necessary to offer an objective reporting is not possible. So news agencies have mostly dismissed it as highly contaminate evidence. We will likely never know exactly what Joe Biden's son has been up to. But hey, Hunter isn't running for office and his father hasn't g

Re:

[fluffernutter]

I don't get why people care about him so much. He isn't currently a felon or running for president.

Re: The Endangered News Act

[flyingfsck]

But hey presto, when the FBI introduces the very same laptop as evidence in Hunterâ(TM)s gun trial, it is suddenly legit with no Russians in sight.

Re:

[OrangeTide]

That's generally how evidence works. There's context of the charges when introducing evidence because it has to be relevant. In this case it is believed to contain evidence of drug and gun purchase.

As for the authenticity of it linking Hunter Biden to Russian payola. That's outside the scope of this trial and that is still not proven. Although if the FBI is willing to go after him for buying a gun while on drugs, then you'd think they'd also go after him for something more serious like bribery or treason. B

Re:

[penguinoid]

Trust us bro, we have the evidence right here, you need to act now! Oh, of course we won't show you the supposed evidence.

Woah, it's election season again, it's time this case was headline news, no you still can't see the supposed evidence, which we've had for 4 years already.

Better than the outcome in Australia

[Mandrel]

Paying many news organisations according to their number of employed journalists is much better than the Australian model of forcing Google to negotiate secret commercial deals with the organisations big enough to be worth negotiating with. Big-News complained about Google's power, then used their own. They'll scream if there's a move toward this Canadian way.

But this is still protection money that Google is paying to be left alone. It also moves funding of journalism back towards advertising when there was an encouraging move toward subscriptions.

Re:

[NotEmmanuelGoldstein]

... paying to be left alone.

I thought they were (indirectly) paying for someone else's labour. It's seems you're demanding Google has the right to copy other people's work, the problem that caused this fiasco. Thus, copyright law exists only to oppress poor people.

There's a number of problems with the idea of copyright but while it's the basis of commerce, it should definitely apply to the rich.

Re:

[Mandrel]

I thought [Google] were (indirectly) paying for someone else's labour. It's seems you're demanding Google has the right to copy other people's work, the problem that caused this fiasco.

Google never showed more than a headline and a short snippet. And after complaints, Google News stopped showing snippets.

Is it just for Google to be forced pay for such links to professional journalism because of its social value, and not pay any other provider of online content? Yes, this is arguable. I'm railing against the way big-media in Australia has cornered these benefits for itself.

Re:

[Mandrel]

It's seems you're demanding Google has the right to copy other people's work, the problem that caused this fiasco.

What could constitute stealing is if Google applies their new AI summaries to news. Then there's a stronger case for Google to pay the news organisations (and perhaps all other content providers).