• Facebook has struck a deal with News Corp for use of its content, following protracted negotiations after the passage of the Australian news media bargaining code.
• Nine Entertainment Co has also signed a letter of intent with Facebook, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
• This means that the media bargaining code, which threatens tech titans with arbitration if they don’t strike deals with publishers, will likely not apply to either Facebook or Google for now.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

Australia’s largest media companies Nine Entertainment Co and News Corp have struck deals with Facebook under which the tech giant will pay for news content, the Sydney Morning Herald has reported.

The precise monetary value of the deals, which follow the passage of the news media bargaining code into law and several weeks of rocky negotiations, is not currently known.

In a statement on Tuesday, News Corp Australia confirmed that it had “reached a multi-year agreement to provide access to trusted news and information to millions of Facebook users”.

This deal includes The Australian, news.com.au news, major metropolitan mastheads like The Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun and The Courier-Mail in Queensland, as well as regional and community publications.

“The agreement with Facebook is a landmark in transforming the terms of trade for journalism, and will have a material and meaningful impact on our Australian news businesses,” said New Corp CEO Robert Thomson in a statement.

“Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch led a global debate while others in our industry were silent or supine as digital dysfunctionality threatened to turn journalism into a mendicant order,” he added, in characteristic colourful form.

News Corp also said that Sky News Australia had reached a new agreement which “extends and significantly builds on” a previous deal made with Facebook in 2019.

No official statement has been provided by Nine Entertainment Co – the owner of Pedestrian Group, publisher of this masthead – but the Sydney Morning Herald reports that the company has signed a letter of intent with Facebook.

The deals will cover the use of Nine and News Corp content in Facebook’s yet-to-be-launched News product.

Facebook already struck deals or signed letters of intent with a number of Australian publishers following the revocation of the company’s news ban in February, including Seven West Media, Solstice Media, Crikey owner Private Media, and Schwartz Media, publisher of The Saturday Paper and The Monthly.

The deals follow similar agreements struck between Google and the publishers in February.

Facebook lifted its Australian news ban after the company was able to negotiation last minute alterations to the news media bargaining code, which would have compelled it to pay publishers for displaying content or face mandatory arbitration.

Under the amended code, Facebook and Google could avoid being subject to the new law at all – and therefore avoid the dreaded prospect of mandatory arbitration – if they struck deals with publishers.

With these deals now very much underway, it seems Facebook has met the government’s standard. Regardless, even if Australia decides Facebook hasn’t put enough money down, the Silicon Valley titan still has plenty of wiggle room.

The amended code, which passed into law the end of February, also leaves a month-long window for Facebook and Google to pull services in Australia if the government decides the code actually does apply to them, leaving a second news ban on the table. It also locks in a two-month negotiation period before arbitration can be imposed, giving the tech giants quite a bit more leeway than they had before.

As it stands, the passed legislation sits in a dusty drawer, doing nothing, applying to nobody – that is, until the Australian government decides that Facebook or Google are no longer paying their fair share for news content.

Whether that will happen is an open question.

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