SYDNEY (Reuters) – Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has reached a content agreement with Facebook Inc. in Australia, the companies said on Tuesday, a step towards resolving a dispute that saw the social media giant shut down thousands of pages in the country .
The undisclosed deal makes News Corp the first major news outlet to enter into a Facebook deal under controversial new laws that allow an arbitrator appointed by the Australian government to set fees if companies fail. they manage to do this.
Facebook shut down all media in the country for a week last month, angering world leaders, as the shutdown included emergency services and government health pages. It ended when Australia agreed to soften parts of the new regulations.
News Corp, which owns about two-thirds of Australia’s metropolitan newspapers, is among media companies asking the government to make Facebook and Google Alphabet Inc pay for media links that drive viewers and advertising dollars to their platforms.
Google has also been opposed for months and has threatened, like Facebook, to withdraw basic services from the country before signing agreements with most media outlets – including News Corp – in the days leading up to the law. .
“The agreement with Facebook is a milestone in transforming business conditions for journalism and will have a material and significant impact on our Australian news business,” News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said in a statement thanking the Australian Prime Minister. , treasurer and chief antitrust regulator by name.
Australia’s head of Facebook news partnerships, Andrew Hunter, said the agreement means the country’s 17 million Facebook users “will have access to premium news articles and cutting-edge videos from national, metropolitan, rural and newsrooms.” suburban News Corp ”.
In addition to the country’s best-selling tabloids The Daily Telegraph in Sydney and The Herald-Sun in Melbourne, News runs a cable TV subscription network called Sky News, which has a separate Facebook deal, the terms of which have not been disclosed. according to News Corp.
News Corp was the first to say it reached an agreement on Facebook, but television broadcaster and newspaper publisher Seven West Media Ltd previously said it had signed a letter of intent to do so.
On Tuesday, seven rivals Nine Entertainment Co. Holdings Ltd reported in the Australian Financial Review that it had also signed a letter of intent for a Facebook deal.
“We always thought we had to see this,” Rod Sims, chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the architect of the new laws, said in a telephone interview.
“If they’ve made a deal with News Corp, they’re obviously in awe of doing business with others.”
A spokesman for the nine people said the company, which also publishes the Sydney Morning Herald, “continues to have constructive and fruitful discussions with Facebook (and) when we have something to announce that we will do.”
A Facebook spokesman declined to comment on the nine negotiations.
Reporting by Byron Kaye in Sydney and Uday Sampath in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Gerry Doyle