Google News Showcase launch 'a good start, but not enough' says minister

Tuesday, 23 August 2022

Google originally hoped to launch Google News Showcase last year and has yet to reach deals with several media firms.

RNZ has joined media firm NZME in striking a deal with Google to provide curated news for the company’s Google News Showcase service, which launches in New Zealand on Wednesday.

Google News Showcase lets people browse a selection of news stories provided by publishers with which Google has negotiated commercial agreements.

These are shown in panels in Google’s Google News and Discover apps.

Google’s regional head of partnerships, Shilpa Jhunjhunwala, said the goal of the service was to help support the media and combat disinformation.

Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson said the launch of Google News Showcase was a “good start” from Google in terms of fulfilling obligations to help fund the media and combat disinformation, but he said it was not enough.

* NZME hopes to negotiate deal to supply news to Google News Showcase

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“No, they haven’t done enough, but it’s a good start and I’m looking forward to seeing a lot more agreements out there,” he said.

Jackson signalled on Monday that he expected to make a decision in about three months on whether to introduce regulation, possibly modelled on a proposed Canadian law that the Canadian government says would “ensure fair revenue sharing between digital platforms and news outlets”.

The launch of Google News Showcase had not changed his views on the merits of such regulation, he said.

”However, I’m heartened to see they are making an effort to form good relationships and contracts in the work place.”

Google had originally expected to launch Google News Showcase in New Zealand last year.

Aside from NZME and RNZ, the other firms that will be contributing curated content are Crux, Newsroom, The Pacific Media Network and Scoop.

Media companies absent from the list include Newshub-owner Warner Bros Discovery, Stuff, TVNZ and Allied Press, the owner of The Otago Daily Times.

Google announced the launch of Google News Showcase under an embargo, the terms of which prevented Stuff seeking comment prior to publication from those companies or from others that did not have a deal in place with Google.

Jhunjhunwala said it would like those companies to also be involved.

“We are in talks. Whenever we launch, that's the beginning. We fully intend to continue discussions with other publications in the coming months.”

Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson says more agreements are needed and they need to be “quality”.

Brook Cameron, general manager of the News Publishers Association (NPA), whose members include Stuff and Allied Press, said after Google’s announcement that it continued to seek an agreement that fairly compensates the broader New Zealand news media for “use of their content on Google and Facebook”.

”It is important any agreement is sustainable and allows for continued investment in quality Kiwi journalism,” she said.

Commenting on the partial coverage, Jackson said “we need as many agreements as possible and they need to be quality agreements”.

Jhunjhunwala said the payments Google made to media firms comprised three elements.

“We pay for licensing the content itself, we pay for curation expertise, and for those publishers that are behind a paywall, we pay to unlock a certain number of articles.”

Media companies that belong to the NPA have provisionally been given the right by the Commerce Commission to collectively negotiate content deals with Google.

But NZME announced in March that it had decided to go it alone in striking a deal with the internet giant.

Its deal is assumed to be worth millions of dollars a year.

RNZ interim chief content officer Megan Whelan confirmed RNZ was being paid by Google under its arrangement to supply curated content, but said the amount was confidential.

Whelan said RNZ would have negotiated with Google under the NPA’s umbrella, had that been possible.

“We would have happily joined the collective going into those negotiations, but the collective made it clear that they didn't want the public media or other broadcasters involved, so we decided to do it by ourselves.

“For us, it's about getting our journalism out there to as many people as possible.”

Its deal with Google would continue beyond its own planned merger with TVNZ, she said.

Whelan said the content RNZ provides would include news but also some light-hearted content.

All the material it made available through Google News Showcase would be freely available directly through RNZ, she said.

NZME chief executive Michael Boggs said it was pleased to be one of the media launch partners.

“This will help further bolster NZME’s digital growth and increase our audience reach,” he said.