Facebook profited from the decline of Australia's news organisations, but enforcing the News Media Bargaining Code will make a bad situation worse without solving the problem of who will pay for the news.
i don't think we should act like journalism was in a great place before.
FB capitalized on a weakened industry, but it was the industry itself that was responsible for that state.
they really fucked themselves by not transitioning to the new market, instead insisting that it was the customers that were wrong. all these years later, i've yet to see a news outlet that would be worth the subscription fee. they're mostly recycling content from other, free sites anyway.
once the older crowd passes, traditional news outlets are done for. the ones that remain will be the ones that were providing the content all along.
True journalism seems to be on its way out. Why pay journalists to research and investigate when you can pump out tons of ai generated garbage for nearly free.
This article was written by an Australian ABC journalist - they are primarily government funded and the News Media Bargaining Code doesn't apply to them.
(their non-government funding mostly comes from creating content which they sell, for example Bluey).