Minister Fahmi Fadzil pushes for greater compensation for news outlets against tech giants

Communications and digital minister, Fahmi Fadzil said that the government, through his ministry, is ready to be a facilitator to assist negotiations of local media organisations to get fair compensation from tech giants, according to Bernama who was quoting Fahmi's speech at the closing ceremony of the National Media Forum 2023 this week. 

This was attributed to the fact that the digital advertisement expenditure market is dominated by tech giants which naturally puts the Malaysian news media industry in a position of loss. Fahmi also stated that based on necessity, a legal framework could be put in place to smooth out the negotiations between the two parties.

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According to Bernama, he said that it is unfair for tech giants to use their power to take advantage of their ability to trade local content for free and to sell it to advertisers for profit especially when journalism requires a huge investment.

To combat this, he added that concerted effort and strategic planning should be implemented to address the issue.

Consequently, with help from the communications and digital ministry, Fahmi aims to achieve greater equity for news outlets with the precondition that the journalism industry must show greater unity against technology companies. This is because SMEs and news agencies stand to get side-lined in negotiations against companies such as Google and Facebook.

This is not the first we have seen of Minister Fahmi being a vocal advocate of fair treatment of Malaysian news outlets. Earlier this year, he reiterated the importance of news outlets being treated fairly by social media platforms. Reported by The Star, he stated that there needs to be greater unity between media organisations and social media platform operators, especially at the organisational level.

After a dialogue with members of the state media fraternity, reported by The Star as well, Fahmi told reporters that he hopes for a stronger relationship with social media operators in order to facilitate freer and amicable discussions. One of the prominent concerns voiced during the dialogue with Fahmi was the issue of copyright infringement that has a larger bearing on social media users. In response, Fahmi said that he and his ministry will be looking into the entire ecosystem of digital usage to iron out the matter, adding that these challenges are ubiquitous and faced by numerous governments.

Additionally, Fahmi took a strong stand against misinformation and hate speech, causing TikTok to remove over 650,000 videos that violated community guidelines. This was due to the platform being a host of political advertising and provocative content which went against Malaysia's values, making it evident that the communications and digital minister is strict regarding the stringent guidelines of Malaysian law. 

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