The New York Times and Wall Street journal in a fight against Google and Facebook

Under the growing dominance of Google and Facebook on online ad and distribution, the New York Times, Wall Street journal and small new papers are banding as a trade organisation to ask Congress for a limited antitrust exemption. This New Media Alliance (NMA) expects to have a concrete meeting with Google and Facebook to find necessary solutions to secure the availability of local journalism. 

The discussion circles around a fair share of revenue and data, subscription models and protection for publishers' intellectual property. Even though two giant online news distributors and publishers find new revenue streams and build contents designed for their platforms like Accelerated Mobile Pages and Instant Article, publishers still concern about a rocky relationship with both platforms as more content-including fake news flow through them. This year, Google and Facebook gain a $83 billion jump in revenue, including Facebook's growth of 32.1 percent and Facebook's growth of 14.8 percent.   
The existing media competition laws prohibit publishers to negotiate with platforms at a large scale. The formation of MNA is an intriguing move and indicative of two online news distributors' clout. It is the duopoly of Google and Facebook that publishers surrender their content and play by their rule on how news and information is displayed, prioritized, and monetized. These rules have given rise to a fake news that is hard to discern from real news.   


The New York Times and Wall Street Journal in fight with Google and Facebook