Murdoch targets tech titans

News Corp co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch has argued technology platforms should face increased scrutiny.

News Corp co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch. PIcture: Ella Pellegrini

News Corp co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch has argued technology platforms should face increased scrutiny, as he championed the growth of the company’s businesses in Australia.

Mr Murdoch was speaking in Cannes, France, at an event with Mark Read, chief executive officer of global advertising and public relations agency WPP, about the future of the media.

The 47-year-old said News Corp would be a growth business, with the recently completed $100 billion deal to sell US entertainment assets to Disney providing access to capital either to buy new businesses or to invest in existing assets.

Online subscriptions for news sites in News Corp were growing and the company was diversifying its revenue, Mr Murdoch said.

The group’s newspapers in Australia — including The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, ­Herald Sun, The Courier-Mail, and The Advertiser — last month passed 500,000 paid digital ­subscriptions.

“We are a very different company sitting here today than we were sitting here three or four years ago,” he said.

Mr Murdoch said audiences of the mastheads were strong and provided opportunities to leverage new businesses from them.

“You still have the trust of the mastheads, whether it’s The Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Australian, The Sun,” he said. “You have the trust and engagement that our readers have built over a lifetime with the added benefits of the digital age.”

Mr Murdoch pointed to the success of REA Group, which ­operates realestate.com.au and is now worth $12.5bn, as an example of how the marketing power of news outlets helped build new businesses.But he said there were threats to journalism from plagiarism. He said internet search platforms needed to be aware of online sites copying news stories and argued they should promote news articles from companies that invested in journalism.

“So many online news sites and purported online newspapers copy other people’s work and the search algorithms can, and really should, take that into consideration,” he said.

“Copying a story is much cheaper than investigating it.”

Mr Murdoch said there was a debate in political circles about the role of technology companies and their impact on the production of journalism.

“They’ve taken our content, they’ve targeted our audience, they have then targeted our advertisers to monetise that audience,” he said.

“What it has led to, and certainly in the United States, is ­bipartisan focus on either how to regulate or do more dramatic steps to pull some of these technology platforms back.”

The discussion was held on the beach at Cannes, alongside similar tents set up by Facebook and Google, for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity where advertising agencies from across the world meet each year. It comes after News Corp recently acquired full ownership of Sky News Australia, which has driven increased audience numbers, particularly on the night of the May federal election.

Mr Murdoch said: “Investing in journalism, breaking stories and moving the news cycle ahead is important to us; journalism is at the core of all we do.”