The MediaWatch team also talked about the weather segment of the new Stuff TV3 news bulletin. TBH I think a national weather report has been pointless since the MetService website and app became widely used. But a *regional* news report would be much more useful, and arguably easier for Stuff to do for TV3 than it would have been for NewsHub.

This is the kind of thing I had in mind when I wrote this;

https://disintermedia.substack.com/p/a-future-for-television-in-aotearoa

#weather #Stuff #TV3 #MetService

MediaWatch also mentioned;

"... the government announcing that it will proceed with proposed legislation to force the titans of tech, Google and Facebook, to do deals with local makers of the news that they carry on their online services."

#ColinPeacock, 2024

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018945752/mediawatch-tv3-s-phoenix-from-the-ashes

This is simply false. They don't "carry" the news. If they were to "carry" the news without permission, DMCA-enabled copyright would make it trivial to stop them.

(1/?)

A new law is being pushed precisely because that's *not* what's happens. What Goggle and Farcebook actually do is enable people using them to *link* to the news, and to *quote from* the news.

That's what the euphemistically named "Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill" would allow corporate news media to charge them for. Links and quotes. Keep that in mind as the debate over this bill continues.

(2/?)

Because there are key principles at stake. Not least the rights of criticism and review protected by the Fair Dealing exemption in NZ copyright law (Fair Use in US law).

If the FDNBB applied to all social media, NZOSS.nz would have to pay a license to RNZ so I can link to and quote from MediaWatch. Let's not forget that a future government - say one unfriendly to independent media - could easily do that with a minor amendment to this law. First they came for Big Tech...

(3/?)

Now obviously I have no sympathy for the two DataFarming corporations targeted by this bill. They deserve much worse than forced bargaining, and I'll be the first the throw a party when their chickens come home to roost.

An approach that fixed the leak - rather than papering over the rot - might start with funding public interest work, like journalism, with a levy on digital ads. But wouldn't finish without thorough antitrust enforcement to de-monopolise them;

https://craphound.com/news/2022/04/17/big-tech-isnt-stealing-news-publishers-content/

(4/?)

But the "Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill" is bad law. A wrong-headed, knee-jerk response, by successive governments who don't understand the problem, and have been led by the nose. By one set of mostly foreign-owned media corporations, who want to be empowered to parasite off another set.

Regardless of our antipathy to the DataDarmers, or our sympathy for journalists, we should oppose the FDNBB.

(5/?)

"In the New Zealand coalition government’s revised version [of the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill", the crucial first step – the designation of whether a particular digital media company falls within the ambit of the legislation – will now be a decision made by the Minister, and not by an independent arbitrator, as originally envisaged."

#GordonCampbell, 2024

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2407/S00008/on-saving-journalists-not-an-industry-that-routinely-exploits-them.htm

Digital Muldoonism. Yay! #facepalm

As I said the FDNBB other day, this is bad law, and we must oppose it.

"That 3% levy on digital advertising envisaged by the Digital Services Tax Bill has been estimated to raise about $54 million annually, a similar sum to what the Journalism Fund formerly offered. But at a crunch, would the coalition government really be willing to impose an ideologically abhorrent new tax that’s being targeted to help out one sole industry, with that industry being… the media?"

#GordonCampbell, 2024

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2407/S00008/on-saving-journalists-not-an-industry-that-routinely-exploits-them.htm

This seems like better policy than the FDNBB, especially because;

"ACT has already baulked at that prospect."

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2407/S00008/on-saving-journalists-not-an-industry-that-routinely-exploits-them.htm