Battle with tech giants finally getting results, News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch says

Australia’s biggest digital publisher has been leading the global charge to force big tech players to pay for news content for more than a decade.

Chief executive Robert Thomson said the changed terms of business with digital platforms is already having an “appreciable impact”. Picture: Getty

News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch says the media company’s long-running push to have technology giants such as Google and Facebook pay for news that they use on their platforms is starting to pay off.

Australia’s biggest digital publisher and the owner of news titles including The Australian, The Wall Street Journal and The Times has been leading the global charge to force technology players to pay for news content for more than a decade.

“Our long battle against the big tech platforms – for years a solitary struggle – has finally helped lead to legislative and legal scrutiny of their monopolistic and algorithmic abuses, with some finally providing payment to publishers for premium content,” Mr Murdoch said in News Corp’s 2020 annual report.

“The fate of a free and unfettered press hangs in the balance of this debate, and I am cautiously optimistic that we will see even more material benefit from this effort in the years ahead.”

Chief executive Robert Thomson said the changed terms of business with digital platforms is already having an “appreciable impact” on the company’s earnings.

“It is fair to say that the ecosystem has absolutely begun to evolve,” Mr Thomson wrote in the annual report.

“For News Corp, which has been pursuing this issue for well over a decade, this favourable outcome would simply not have been possible without the leadership of Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, and the support of a board which backed advocacy, even when News Corp often stood alone in pursuit of the principle of a premium for premium content.”

Mr Thomson said the coronavirus has irrevocably changed many things, including News Corp’s operations and accelerating pre-existing digital trends.

“Without a doubt, digitisation has accelerated and all of our businesses have responded with customary ingenuity”, he said, adding that nearly all of News’ mastheads had record audiences during the 2020 financial year.

“We are continuing to focus on acquiring digital subscribers and audience while right-sizing our businesses to be digital-first, which is necessarily resulting in significant cost reductions,” he said.

Mr Thomson said News will always invest in news, regardless of its format.

“We are very proud of our traditions, and we will always invest in the very best journalism, but the format is less important than the function, and we firmly believe that the digital reincarnation of these titles will ensure a profitable future and a continuing role in their communities,“ he said.

“We are also constantly, restlessly reviewing our portfolio with a view to ensuring that we have the optimum asset mix.”

The release of News’ 2020 annual report on Tuesday comes two months after the group reported strong subscriber numbers for its sports streaming service Kayo and Australian mastheads as the fallout of COVID-19 on advertising revenue hit profit.

News booked a net loss of $US401m ($556m) for the fourth-quarter of the 2020 financial year, including non-cash impairment charges of $US292m and higher restructuring costs due to the coronavirus crisis.

For the 2020 financial year, Mr Murdoch received remuneration totalling $US3.35m, down 33 per cent last year after giving up all of his annual cash bonus citing the Covid pandemic as previously announced by News.

Mr Thomson’s total compensation came in below $US12m. He also elected to forgo the bulk of his annual cash bonus.

News Corp’s Australian listed shares last traded at $19.86, up 0.5 per cent.