Google Takes FTC to Task Over Journalism’s Future

There’s a lot of hand-wringing about the future of journalism, but does that mean the government should step in?


The Federal Trade Commission last month issued a “discussion draft” paper that proposed things like legislation to limit news aggregators, and tax breaks and antitrust exemptions for news organizations. Other reports, like one from Columbia University, also have suggested that the government take a bigger role in supporting journalism. This week, tech giant Google put in its two cents — or 20 pages, to be exact — questioning the FTC draft proposals and saying that “business problems require business solutions” rather than regulation.

The problem, Google says, is that newspapers have failed to keep up with the times. To back up its argument, Google quotes the former editor of the Rocky Mountain News on lessons he learned from the paper’s failure, including that the company made a mistake by seeing its website as relatively unimportant.

Google points out that search engines and services like Google News allow news organizations to find new audiences. And it says the Internet has increased the opportunity for new publishers — like bloggers — to enter the market. Meanwhile, the FTC draft focuses on newspapers and mentions the word “blog” only once in 35 pages, as City University of New York journalism professor Jeff Jarvis pointed out on his blog.

Google also argues that journalists should not have a copyright on so-called “hot news” or scoops, given that journalists have long reported the work of others and that facts shouldn’t be copyrighted. (It’s no surprise that Google comes down on the side of news aggregators, since Google itself operates one, but this brief uses tougher language than Google has in the past.)

The tech giant comes out strongly against breaks for news organizations and journalists, pointing out that historically the FTC has opposed such exemptions.

But there’s still a consensus that journalism is an important part of democracy. The question is whether that part of its role will survive. Other ideas proposed in the FTC document included increasing access to government data and starting a journalism division of AmeriCorps.