Andrew Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation helps smaller publishers negotiate with Big Tech

With the financial backing of Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest, 18 of the nation’s small news publishers will join forces to seek compensation from Google and Facebook.

Andrew Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation will this week lodge a collective bargaining class exemption with the ACCC, which will allow eligible small news publishers to collectively bargain without breaching competition laws.

A cohort of Australia’s small news publishers will collectively negotiate with Facebook and Google in a bid to strike payment-for-content deals, after their individual efforts to reach commercial agreements with the tech giants over the past year were repeatedly rebuffed.

With the financial backing of mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation, 18 of the nation’s small news publishers – with annual turnover of less than $10m – will join forces to seek compensation for the digital platforms’ use of the group’s journalism content on their sites.

Such deals would mirror similar agreements that larger media organisations, including the ABC, Nine Entertainment and News Corp (publisher of The Australian), struck with Google and Facebook earlier this year.

Frontier Technology, an initiative of Minderoo Foundation, will assist the publishers with their engagement with Google and Facebook.

Minderoo Foundation will this week lodge a collective bargaining class exemption with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which will allow eligible small news publishers to collectively bargain without breaching competition laws.

Frontier Technology director of policy Emma McDonald said small Australian publishers who produced public interest journalism for their communities “should be given the same opportunity as large publishers to negotiate for use of their content for the public benefit”.

“Safeguarding public interest journalism and diversity of thought and opinion is essential in a high-functioning liberal democracy,” she said.

“Journalism holds the powerful to account; it plays a role in supporting social and policy changes, it keeps a journal of record by reporting on courts and government, and it serves a public interest function by providing a forum for debate and ideas.”

Among the 18 publications that have joined the campaign are The Australian Jewish News, The Greek Herald, Australian Rural & Regional News, and the Star Observer.

Lawrence Gibbons, publisher of Star Observer and City Hub Sydney, said: “Any kind of financial payback from the big tech companies makes it more viable for small independent publishers to continue to generate independent news.”

A spokeswoman for Google said: “Talks are continuing with publishers of all sizes.”