Global Media Forum: How Big Tech is changing journalism

It's been about two decades since the largest information technology companies started making decisions about how ordinary people get their news — how news is made, how it is disseminated and how it is received, with their domination of everything from search engines to social media and more recently artificial intelligence.

The influence of these tech giants reaches beyond media into the political sphere, as the heads of these influential companies get involved in elections and put governments under pressure.

So how can media and the state in general preserve their independence in a scenario like this? And what kinds of relationships should journalists have with the five so-called Big Tech companies: Alphabet (Google's parent company), Apple, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft? At German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle's annual event, the Global Media Forum, which began Tuesday in Bonn, this was a leading question.

Media preparing 'for battle'

Even just the term is concerning, Courtney C. Radsch, director of the US-based Center for Media and Digital Governance, said at the event.

"Society does not mutually append the word big to an industry out of respect and admiration," she noted during the panel, "Between innovation and dependence: Journalism's love-hate relationship with Big Tech," which was moderated by DW journalist and presenter, Jaafar Abdul Karim.

"We do it out of fear, in preparation for a battle," Radsch explained.

Online platforms are now hugely powerful and do everything from deciding how visible certain forms of content should be to distributing and monetizing it. Genuine cooperation between platforms and journalism is difficult to find, Radsch suggested. "Are we partners when we're cleaning up all the crud and disinformation spreading online?" she asked.

And in another example, Radsch points out how large language models, or AI systems, are often trained on journalistic content and usually without any compensation being paid for the use of that content. Journalists play a crucial role in this training, she says, because the information they provide is what keeps the AIs grounded in facts and reality.

"How do we know what we know?" Radsch asks. The whole system collapses when AI models train on content generated by AI models. "Like a photocopy of a painting of a picture, each generation [of the AI models is] drifting a little further from reality."

AI needs us more than we need it, Radsch argues. "At least I like to think that," she concedes.

Radsch's final statement is somewhat dramatic. "When monopoly power and political power start coalescing in the same companies, you're not looking at a competition problem anymore," she concluded, "you are looking at the architecture of technofascism."

Cyriac Roeding, an entrepreneur and investor from Silicon Valley, called for a change in perspective and for the media to take greater responsibility.

"I think it is high time that we leave this standard argument of Big Tech against poor journalists," he said during the same panel. Media outlets themselves should innovate and develop new business models, move forward with models based on paid subscriptions and harness new technologies.

"If you don't pay cash, you pay with brain rot," Roeding said. 

That doesn't work everywhere though, Marcela Duarte, director of innovation at long-running Brazilian fact-checking outfit Aos Fatos (in English, To the Facts), pointed out.

Paywalls are unrealistic in countries like Brazil because many people simply cannot afford them, she said. "People don't have money sometimes to eat. Is it fair that I want people to pay for their content? I don't think so."

Follow the audience?

Journalism should be happening where its audience is and often that is actually on platforms like Meta's Facebook and Instagram or Alphabet's YouTube. The New York Times' subscription model has been successful but the model isn't necessarily transferable to every country, Duarte argued.

German television presenter Eckart von Hirschhausen, who is also a medical doctor, spoke about the real-life repercussions of Big Tech's dominance of information sources.

"There are people dying now of measles because of disinformation … so this is not just a debate on relationships. It really is a matter of life and death," he stated.

Von Hirschhausen would like to see platforms run by Big Tech held accountable for the damage they do as well as a European network that is guided by values, "not profits and lies."

'Journalism Out Loud'

The theme of this year's Global Media Forum is the motto, Journalism Out Loud: Speak. Listen. Act. More than 1,400 media practitioners from more than 110 countries are in Bonn to discuss how media outlets and journalists everywhere should deal with disinformation, polarization and technological change.

During the forum, which runs until June 24, participants will also discuss new ways to strengthen journalism's all-important role in democracy.

"Freedom of the press and freedom of expression are not a luxury," DW director Barbara Massing said in her opening remarks at the forum. "They are indispensable for democracy, for security and for free societies."

On Tuesday, DW's Freedom of Speech Award was presented to Hong Kong media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, a prominent advocate for press freedom and democracy. The founder of Apple Daily has been imprisoned since 2020. His daughter accepted the award in Bonn on his behalf.

This story was originally published in German.