Last week the great and good of New Zealand's news media urged MPs to back a law change to make Google and Facebook pay them for their news. They say the income could be critical to the survival of journalism here. But the lobby group campaigning for better public media says there's a better way to 'send a lifeboat'.

Last week, the great and good of New Zealand's news media urged MPs to back a law change to make Google and Facebook pay them for their news. They say the income could be critical to the survival of journalism here. But the lobby group campaigning for better public media says there's a better way to 'send a lifeboat'.

Last week, the nation's news media publishers pitched up in Parliament to make a pitch to MPs to pass the legislation left behind by the Labour government that would effectively compel big tech companies who carry their news online to pay them for it.

After the Economic Development, Science and Innovation select committee heard them out, Media and Communications Minister Melissa Lee told reporters she doesn't support the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill "in its current form" but would wait to see what the Committee recommends.

So did the prime minister on Newstalk ZB last Monday.

"I just think media companies can do their own individual deals with those tech platforms - as your umbrella organisation NZME and others have as well," he told Mike Hosking.

Google has done several individual deals since 2021 to carry local publishers' news in its own service Google News Showcase.

But the Ashburton Guardian's Daryl Holden told the committee it was "a pittance".

"We accepted the deal from a position of no strength. I'm almost embarrassed to say how much we get because it would not be enough to hire one graduate journalist," he told the Economic Development, Science and Innovation committee.

He was far from the only one to tell the Committee last week the imbalance of power in the market is such that they can't get the tech titans to negotiate a genuine value for their news.

That's the reason that the News Publishers Association went to the Commerce Commission for permission to negotiate collectively - and the former government put the Bill forward in the first place.

The prime minister was also right about the Herald's owner NZME doing a deal with Facebook owner Meta, which has been much more reluctant to negotiate with local media.

But NZME chief executive Michael Boggs told MPs last week it won't last long.

"Meta has not renewed after a year because I think they think this (Bill) isn't going to happen," he said. …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details