The deal enables news content from News Corp Australia’s network of publications to be shown on the Facebook News product
Facebook and News Corp reach agreement over content access in Australia. (Credit: Edar from Pixabay)
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has entered into a multi-year agreement with Facebook for providing access to its news and information to the social media platform’s users in Australia.
The deal enables the news content of the mass media corporation to be shown on the Facebook News product.
Included in the agreement are News Corp Australia’s national newspaper The Australian, news website news.com.au, The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, The Courier-Mail, and other regional and community publications.
Parallelly, Sky News Australia, which is owned by Sky News Australia, has also entered into a new deal with Facebook. The new deal is said to extend and significantly consolidate on an existing arrangement.
According to News Corp, the three-year deal signed with Facebook follows an agreement made by the parties in October 2019 in which its publications in the US would be paid for providing access to additional stories for Facebook News.
Currently, the mass media corporation has agreements with Facebook, Google, and Apple for providing potentially millions of readers across the world with its journalism and related content.
News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said: “The agreement with Facebook is a landmark in transforming the terms of trade for journalism, and will have a material and meaningful impact on our Australian news businesses.
“Mark Zuckerberg and his team deserve credit for their role in helping to fashion a future for journalism, which has been under extreme duress for more than a decade.
“Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch led a global debate while others in our industry were silent or supine as digital dysfunctionality threatened to turn journalism into a mendicant order.”
Last month, Facebook had temporarily banned news content in Australia in protest of the news media bargaining code. However, after reaching a compromise with the Australian government, the social media platform restored the services.
In late February, the Australian government launched the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code, which comes with a framework to facilitate good faith bargaining between technology platforms and news publishers.