Guardian hypocrisy over AAP shutdown

AAP chairman Campbell Reid has ­described a Guardian report that it is closing to hurt small media organisations as ‘gobsmacking hypocrisy’.

ACCC chairman Rod Sims. Picture: AAP

Australian Associated Press chairman Campbell Reid has ­described a report by The Guardian that it is closing the ­national newswire to hurt small media organisations as “gobsmacking hypocrisy”, saying the British-based media company had slashed its payment to AAP.

It is understood The Guardian cut its spending with AAP, which provides stories, videos and photos to media companies for a fee, by 40 per cent to $75,000 annually from about $120,000.

Mr Reid, who is also a senior News Corp Australia executive, said on Thursday that The Guardian was “one of the very companies that slashed the amount it was prepared to pay for AAP”.

“It is one of the organisations whose decisions have contributed to the closure of AAP and it and the MEAA’s leadership should confront the bigger, tectonic forces our entire industry faces rather than trot out this ­arrant nonsense,” Mr Reid said.

“To preserve a vibrant Australian media industry and to prevent more losses, we need the federal government’s proposed codes of conduct ­between the tech giants and publishers to deliver a genuine framework that means these tech companies start paying for our content.”

Mr Reid said “the elephant in the room in these conversations is never in the room, which is Google and Facebook”.

“But even if Google and Facebook start paying, which they must, the future of a wire service — I think if there’s any kind of wire service — is going to be like a specialised mining industry bulletin or there’s the NSW crime bulletin or something like that,” he said.

Guardian Australia editor ­Lenore Taylor wrote in an ­opinion piece on Thursday that the online publication relied on the “safety net” of an AAP subscription to cover events her outlet could not. She also ­argued that without AAP, it would be far more difficult for other media players to grow big enough to have influence in the market.

Mr Reid said comments by Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance federal president Marcus Strom following the publication of The Guardian’s report were “conspiracy theory nonsense”.

Mr Strom has implied that there was anti-competitive collusion between AAP’s two biggest shareholders, News Corp and Nine Entertainment. AAP also counts Seven West Media and Australian Community Media as minority stakeholders.

Australia’s competition regulator chairman Rod Sims said it was examining the closure of AAP on June 26 after 85 years.

AAP’s Pagemasters sub-editing and production business will also shut at the end of August, with its remaining media operations to be sold.

Mr Sims said the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission was already investi­gating the competitive impact the close would have on the media landscape.

“It is a fairly high-level look,” he said. “I don’t want to signal anything in particular, but it is a big development, and a very sad development — not just for the people involved but for journalism generally.”

Mr Sims said smaller media outlets were more reliant on AAP than the larger ones, so AAP’s closure would be detrimental for competition.