Thank you.
Thank you very much, Richard. Thank you for taking the time to be here. It was really felt to be important by the committee that Google be represented here. With much of the ground we've covered, all roads seemed to lead to you, and to Facebook particularly.
To set the stage, of course—these are things that you know but others may not be aware of—Alphabet, Google's parent company, is now the world's largest media owner, and increasing. It is 136% bigger than Disney, which is second, and bigger than Disney and Comcast in third combined. As well, 12% of all global media spend is through Google and Facebook. So it's a lot of money. That seems to be the issue for many of the newspaper owners, even the ones who appeared here only a few moments ago.
I guess this is what we're trying to get our heads around. What's interesting is that this is not a Canadian problem, per se. America is unique in very many circumstances. However, when we compare ourselves more accurately to countries in Europe, Australia, or New Zealand, we see very common things coming from their parliaments as well.
A report just came out the other day from the Media Reform Coalition and National Union of Journalists. They want to make Google and Facebook fund public service reporting in Britain. They said:
...Google and Facebook are not only amassing eye-watering profits and paying minimal tax in the UK, they are also bleeding the newspaper industry dry by sucking up advertising revenue. As national and local newspapers try to cut their way out of trouble by slashing editorial budgets and shedding staff, journalistic quality is becoming a casualty. Public interest journalism in particular has been hit the hardest as newspapers are being lured into a clickbait culture which favours the sensational and the trivial.
I can tell you, as a national reporter, I was often brought into clickbait and the need for that in order to maintain eyeballs on the more serious matters that might be on our program.
The report went on:
In the light of this, we propose a 1% levy on the operations of the largest digital intermediaries with the resulting funds redistributed to non-profit ventures with a mandate to produce original local or investigative news reporting.
I have no idea; I'm reading this out loud, and I have no idea if that's the answer. Whenever I see “1% levy”, I don't necessarily think that's a good thing, but I do have to ask you that question. As you said, and it seems we're at this turning point, we're at a renaissance of journalistic creativity.
On the other hand, David Simon, the creator of The Wire, when he appeared before Congress on this issue, said we are heading towards a golden age of political corruption because there are no small newspapers covering municipal politics where decisions are made on property, where decisions are made on development. That's his big concern.
Help me, in the limited time we have here, to square that circle. I also would really appreciate it if you could tell me—I mean, this is stuff you've heard before—what answers or what agreements you have come to with other jurisdictions, the European Union and otherwise.