The News/Media Alliance commends Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and the Indonesian government for passing a law requiring Alphabet (owner of Google) and Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) to compensate local news outlets for use of their content.
According to La Prensa Latina, the law will entail “individual agreements covering paid licenses, profit-sharing and other agreed proposals.” Asia News Network reported that the law also requires the tech platforms to prioritize news content from verified media outlets, contribute to journalist training and take steps to address the spread of fake news.
The Indonesia law is the latest in a string of compensation laws to be passed around the world, including Australia in 2021 and Canada in 2023. In the United States, the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA, AB 886) passed the California Assembly in 2023 and is expected to be brought before the California Senate this year, and the federal Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) (S.1094) passed out of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 2023. A similar bill to the CJPA was also introduced earlier this month in Illinois.
“We are encouraged by and applaud Indonesia’s decisive action to protect high-quality journalism by demanding the Big Tech platforms fairly compensate publishers for the use of their valuable content,” said News/Media Alliance President and CEO, Danielle Coffey. “As more and more countries around the world pass journalism compensation legislation, it is clear that there is broad recognition of the value high-quality journalism provides and the critical importance of ensuring continued access to accurate and reliable information. These laws are helping to restore a marketplace that has been upended by the dominant tech platforms to help flow revenue back to the publishers that produce that journalism.”
The law is expected to go into effect in August.
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Members of the News/Media Alliance staff have contributed to this post.
