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Fighting for journalism and profitable news media
Google faces UK search regulation | Traffic down for most US and global news sites
And we have your news diary for the week ahead, kicking off with Hamas returning Israeli hostages.
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Welcome to this week’s Press Gazette Future of Media newsletter on Monday, 13 October.
🪖As Hamas begins the final handback of Israeli hostages today it is worth remembering the journalists and media workers killed covering the war in Gaza.
According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists the final tally for journalists and media workers killed by Israel is 237 with a further two killed by Hamas. At the time of writing international media are still not allowed into Gaza.
The CPJ believes at least 25 journalists were “murdered” by the Israeli military, so deliberately targeted because of their work.
The continuing impunity for Israel over these war crimes makes journalists in conflict zones everywhere less safe.
Israel leads off our news diary for the week ahead.
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📉The latest top 50 rankings of news websites in the US and worldwide show more fallers than risers.
The Daily Mail, Forbes and Business Insider are among sites which saw dramatic year-on-year traffic falls in September.
But big hitters including the BBC, The New York Times and The Guardian recorded healthy growth showing that declining is far from universal.
As we reported last week, changes in the Google algorithm have led to sharp falls in search visibility for some publishers. Many feel this has been compounded by the rollout of AI summaries on Google search which (often inaccurately) answer user questions without needing to click through to sources.
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👀 Hopes that Google’s capricious control of UK online media might be curbed came a step closer on Friday.
The Competition and Markets Authority confirmed that Google’s search and Discover platforms will be subject to regulation under the UK Digital Markets Act.
At the very least publishers will expect Google to stop forcing them into accepting AI Overviews as the price of appearing in search.
At £20bn+ a year, Google’s UK advertising revenue is vastly bigger than all publishers, TV and radio combined.
Tiktok and Meta are likely to be next on the hitlist for the CMA.
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