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