Editorial | Press freedom and the hyperscalers

On the face of it, Jamaica has little to complain about on the matter of press freedom. Last year, Reporters Without Borders ranked us seventh among countries where journalists can go about their jobs without threats or intimidation, or overt action by the Government to impede their reporting. Indeed, apart from noting a few verbal indiscretions by Prime Minister Andrew Holness, Reporters Without Borders labelled Jamaica’s media environment as “almost flawless”.

While that characterisation is not as nuanced as it might be, this newspaper won’t quibble over the assessment. We, however, warn that the press freedom which Jamaicans cherish and take for granted is under greater stress and could very well collapse, with potentially bad consequences for the country’s democracy.

Ironically, the immediate source of the threat is not within, directed by the Government or powerful private interests keen to prevent the media’s spotlight on their actions. It comes from the big technology companies (Big Tech), the so-called hyperscalers that dominate the Internet, which are largely accountable to no one, and whose impunity countries around the world have been attempting to rein in. In that regard, this newspaper’s concern for the dangers posed by Big Tech overlaps some of the themes of today’s observation of World Press Freedom Day by UNESCO, including the call for greater transparency of Big Tech’s platforms.

It seems almost banal to revisit the value of a free and independent press to a liberal democracy – its role as watchdog against the corrosive behaviour of those who wield power; its transmission of information; and its amplification of debate, which helps societies to make informed decisions. Yet, there is nothing platitudinous about these assertions. For they are verifiable facts, rooted in the history of the press and the tradition of liberal democracy.

TRANSPARENT AND DEPENDABLE

Organised media perform these functions in a far more transparent and dependable fashion than the outlets spawned in emergent technologies and social media platforms. There are two primary reasons for this: they trade in facts and, more critically, they are accountable. And, unlike the citizen journalists who have flourished as technology lowered the barrier to media (sending a bit of information viral is a finger click from a personal device), the content of traditional media is invigilated.

In other words, traditional, organised media usually employ journalists who are trained in the art of gathering information and distilling facts from rumour and speculation, and in employing storytelling techniques that clarify the various elements into easily digestible narratives.

Then there are the checks and balances. Editors review reporters’ output to lessen, if not totally eliminate, errors. Vitally, when mistakes are made they are usually corrected. Additionally, people who feel wronged by traditional media have recourse through the press’ internal system and, ultimately, via the courts.

The bottom line: Serious, professional and accountable media operations are complex enterprises that are expensive to run. However, low barriers to entry and the evolution of the uninvigilated citizen journalists have fragmented media markets, placing pressure on the economics of traditional media.

It would not be a problem if this were all the disruptive competition they faced in domestic markets. They have, also, to contend with the global technology behemoths that play by their own rules. Which, in the case of Jamaica and the wider Caribbean Community (CARICOM), is mostly no rules at all.

The hyperscalers (such as Alphabet, the owner of Google, and Meta, whose stable includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, among others) leverage their size and the algorithms that give them vast swathes of information on people who use the Internet, to command huge amounts of advertising on their platforms. Last year, for example, Google had income of US$256.74 billion, from which it took US$76 billion to the bottom line. Eighty per cent of that profit was from advertising income. Meta (Facebook) had income of just under US$119 billion, and posted a net profit of US$39.3 billion.

SUCKING ADVERTISING REVENUE

Some of that revenue and profit was earned in Jamaica and other CARICOM countries by sucking away advertising revenue from domestic media. But, as in other parts of the world, much of the content that drives advertising to the hyperscalers’ platforms is developed and paid for by other people, including domestic media, for which they are not compensated.

Moreover, when Google, say, sells advertising in domestic markets and places those ads on the sites of local entities, the sharing of the income is heavily skewed in Google’s favour. Yet, Google and the other Big Techs pay no taxes in Jamaica or other regional territories on the income they earn in these countries, as is the new global intent, driven by G7 countries. Neither has there been any move in the Caribbean, similar to the European Union’s (EU) Digital Marketing Act, which regulates how the hyperscalers operate in the EU, including limiting their ability to leverage the data they collect from people to earn income, or to use interlocking relationships of the platforms they own to corral users.

Jamaica, on its own, might find it difficult to take on the hyperscalers. But acting in concert with its CARICOM partners, deploying CARICOM’s competition rules, headway can be made. Further, global attitudes towards the hyperscalers make the timing opportune. It would be a service to the region’s democracy.