Big Tech Is a Thief and a Liar, Says New York Times Publisher
The publisher of The
New York Times recently made an extraordinary
speech about AI, journalism, and the public square that’s
received surprisingly little public reaction. What makes A.G. Sulzberger’s
speech extraordinary is that it was unabashedly crusading, and crusading is a
stance New York Times publishers have rarely if ever adopted over the
newspaper’s 175-year history. What makes the scant reaction surprising is that
the speech’s audience—fellow leaders of some of the world’s most powerful news
organizations—have a commercial self-interest in the crusade Sulzberger is advocating
for. What’s more, the accusations Sulzberger made, the plainspoken language he
used, the alleged villains he called out by name—Google, Meta, OpenAI—are the
stuff of high drama.
Sulzberger’s core argument
when addressing the annual WAN-IFRA World News Media Conference on June 1 was
that Big Tech is stealing the news media’s property and undermining democracy,
and that the only solution is for news organizations to work together to resist
it.
Big Tech’s “hijacking of
the public square is made possible by the original sin that animates their AI
products—a brazen theft of intellectual property that has occurred at an
unprecedented scale,” Sulzberger argued. “Tech giants strip-mine news websites
without permission or compensation. They repackage these stolen goods as their
own, siphoning off the audiences and revenue that otherwise would go to the
news organizations that created this work.”
If such stealing is
allowed to continue, he continued, we risk a “future where a crucial wellspring
of a healthy society and a stable democracy—the truth, understanding and
accountability provided by original journalism—continues to dry up.… The news
industry’s only path to counteracting [Big Tech’s machinations] … is by working
together” to protect the industry’s property rights, including through
lawsuits. (The Times, he noted, has spent $20 million on such lawsuits.)
In sum, the publisher of
one of the world’s most influential newspapers has accused some of the richest,
most powerful companies on earth of being criminals; of building their vast
fortunes on a foundation of lies and theft at grand scale. And he urged the
rest of the media to join the Times in fighting back, for the sake of not only their own commercial survival but the survival of a free press and the
democracy it nourishes.
Bravo to Le
Monde, Variety, and Press
Gazette for writing about the speech, and to The Seattle Times
for publishing excerpts on its opinion page. But given the big names, enormous
sums, and profound stakes involved, why has there been so little other
coverage? Why are those outlets the exceptions?
Here’s a hint: The Times
itself didn’t report on the speech. Instead, the business side of the paper
issued a press release containing the text. But there was no mention of the
speech in the news, business, opinion, or other sections of the paper. That
absence reflects a view long held by newsroom traditionalists: We (almost)
never report on ourselves. The corollary—nor do we report on our
competitors—likely explains why the rest of the media has been silent.
Perhaps such coverage is
still to come; certainly Sulzberger’s call to arms warrants the attention of
any specialist outlet focused on the news media. And maybe there are executive
conversations taking place right now that will result in other newsrooms joining
Sulzberger’s movement. After all, his speech did invite journalists and news
executives to get in touch, offer their own ideas, and explore possible
collaborations.
Covering Climate Now
welcomes this opportunity, and we urge fellow journalists around the world to
consider pursuing it, as well. We find Sulzberger’s analysis of the dangers
facing our industry and our society persuasive, and highly pertinent to our
core concern of how journalism reports on the climate emergency and its
solutions.
AI, in case it isn’t
obvious, is bad for the climate because its data centers demand gargantuan
amounts of scarce water and costly electricity, but it is also bad because
building AI chatbots, among other things, sucks away revenue that rightfully
belongs to news outlets. That theft is one reason why, as Sulzberger noted, the
U.S. has “lost 75% of its
journalists and more than 3,000
newspapers” over the last two decades. That’s 3,000 newspapers that
will never tell the climate story.
Even for news outlets that
remain in business, shrunken revenues make it challenging to cover even routine
subjects, much less a story like climate change. AI is no friend to a free
press or a livable climate, and it’s time journalists grapple with how we
respond.
This article is published as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.
