Facebook Agrees to Pay News Corp for Australia News

Facebook has signed a three-year deal to pay News Corp for access to its Australia news. The move is resolving a standoff with one of the country’s publishers over payment for content.

The deal covers The Australian national newspaper, The Daily Telegraph in New South Wales, Herald Sun in Victoria and The Courier-Mail in Queensland. Details on the amount Facebook is paying for access to news was not disclosed. Sky News Australia, which like News Corp is owned by Rupert Murdoch, extended an existing agreement with Facebook.

News Corp said in a statement that the deal follows an agreement from October 2019 in which its US publications receive payments for giving Facebook News access to additional stories. News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said the deal is a landmark in transforming the terms of trade for journalism, and will have a material and meaningful impact on our Australian news businesses. “Mark Zuckerberg and his team deserve credit for their role in helping to fashion a future for journalism, which has been under extreme duress for more than a decade,“ added Thomson.

Facebook temporarily cut off news from its services in Australia last month as the government reviewed a controversial law requiring the company and Google to negotiate licensing agreements with local media companies for their news content. The law was subsequently approved.