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Australia’s laws forcing Google and Facebook to pay for news are ready to take effect, though the laws' architect said it will take time for the digital giants to strike media deals
AUSTRALIA’S Parliament passed the News Media Bargaining Code today, requiring tech giants Google and Facebook to pay for news content.
The law has been welcomed as a landmark levy making the two digital companies pay for the content that attracts many of their users — but critics said last-minute amendments negotiated by Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg following the firm’s dramatic shutdown of Australian media pages last week showed corporate players still wielded far too much power.
When Facebook restored access to the pages “headlines said Facebook had backed down — in reality it looks like the government has again watered down the code,” International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) general secretary Anthony Bellanger told the Morning Star.
![[Pic: Andrew Wiard]](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2026-01/19860330_a_wiard_0001JPG.jpg.webp?itok=nkzZbinE)
As advertising drains away, newsrooms shrink and local papers disappear, MIKE WAYNE argues that the market model for news is broken – and that public-interest alternatives, rooted in democratic accountability, are more necessary than ever
Enduring myths blame print unions for their own destruction – but TONY BURKE argues that the Wapping dispute was a calculated assault by Murdoch on organised labour, which reshaped Britain’s media landscape and casts a long shadow over trade union rights today
On the 40th anniversary of the Wapping dispute, this Morning Star special supplement traces the long-planned conspiracy that led to the mass sackings of printworkers in 1986 – a struggle whose unresolved injustices still demand redress today, writes ANN FIELD
