When long-running speaker of the US House of Representatives Tip O'Neill popularised the maxim "all politics is local" in the 1980s, he wouldn't have known how loudly his words would resonate four decades later.

Subscribe now for unlimited access.

Login or signup to continue reading

Back then the internet as we know it did not exist, there was no social media and artificial intelligence was no more than a frightening theme in science fiction, not the pressing reality governments and society must confront today.

Now, O'Neill's words echo louder than ever because, unchallenged, these technologies threaten to gut the local out of politics as social media and search platforms use the work of journalists to enrich their owners while impoverishing the traditional sources of news.

That news is vital for democracy. Whether they're reporters who sit through hours of council meetings or investigative journalists who uncover malfeasance at a state or federal level, their work, to purloin a phrase from the late Don Chipp, keeps the bastards honest. So it's worth defending tooth and nail.

The government says it's doing just that with its changes to its News Bargaining Incentive but Australian media outlets fear the tweaks to the way the digital platforms are taxed will do more harm than good and that could mean there is eventually less money to compensate them for the content being sucked up by the tech giants and further job losses will be inevitable.

Just like the timid approach to reining in the online betting industry, the government appears to........

© Canberra Times