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12:25 PM ET, February 18, 2021

Mediagazer

 Top News: 
Damien Cave / New York Times:
Australia's concentrated media industry, dominated by News Corp, is aligned with the prime minister and has sought compensation from tech companies for years  —  Pathbreaking legislation showed that even a small nation can get the tech giant to bend.  But the United States seems unlikely to follow.
RELATED:
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Banning Australian news makes sense for Facebook and may prompt people to visit news sites directly; Google's payoffs, though, will invite global shakedowns  —  Yesterday, I wrote that Australia's News Media Bargaining Code threatened to splinter the internet.
Campbell Brown / Facebook:
Facebook News Partnerships VP: Australia's planned law “fails to recognize ... the fundamental nature of the relationship between our platform and publishers”  —  Today we made an incredibly difficult decision to restrict the availability of news on Facebook in Australia.
William Easton / About Facebook:
Ahead of proposed media law, Facebook says it's banning Australians from sharing/viewing news and all users from sharing from and viewing Australian news Pages  —  In response to Australia's proposed new Media Bargaining law, Facebook will restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing …
Reuters and Associated Press:
Facebook says it generated ~5.1B free referrals to Australian publishers worth ~AU$407M last year, as Australia's Media Bargaining law passes the House  —  - Facebook will no longer allow people in Australia to read or share news  — The move is a response to the country's proposed Media Bargaining law
Benedict Evans:
Australia's proposal for media compensation, which covers raw link sharing, is presented as a competition case when it's actually a tech tax and media subsidy  —  Newspaper revenue really started to collapse well over a decade ago, and we've been discussing what to do about it for almost as long.
Nicholas McElroy / ABC:
Australian authorities in public health, weather, and other areas say Facebook has removed posts from their feeds following Facebook's news ban
News Corp:
News Corp announces a multi-year, global partnership with Google to provide content from its news sites “in return for significant payments by Google”
Nicholas Quah / Vulture:
Marc Tracy / New York Times:
Profile of Stewart Bainum, who set up a nonprofit to buy The Baltimore Sun; filing shows price of $65M for The Sun and other papers under nonbinding term sheet  —  Stewart Bainum, a hotel magnate and former politician, has swooped in with a plan to run it and other papers in Maryland as part of a nonprofit.
RELATED:
Margaret Sullivan / Washington Post:
Alden's audacious lie that it ensures “sustainability of robust local journalism” is evidence of its unsuitability as a newspaper owner
Hanaa' Tameez / Nieman Lab:
NYT debuts a Slack app that provides a daily recommended read, a “save for later” button, and alerts users if a link they shared was discussed in other channels  —  On Thursday, The New York Times launched a Slack app that's designed to help foster conversations about Times stories …
Discussion: NYT Open and @annadubenko
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Recent deals like the iHeart Media's purchase of Triton Digital suggest that ad tech, not exclusive content, will be the key to long-term success in podcasting  —  iHeart Media acquires Triton Digital for $230 million  —  iHeartMedia, the company behind podcasts like Stuff You Should Know and hundreds …
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Google adds the Apple TV app to its newest Chromecast device with Google TV and has made it available on Sony and TCL smart TVs that Google TV  —  Plugging a notable gap in its streaming lineup, Google has added the Apple TV app — the only way to get the Apple TV Plus service — to its newest Chromecast device.
Discussion: The Verge
Brian Flood / Fox News:
Rush Limbaugh has died at the age of 70 after a battle with lung cancer  —  Limbaugh's death, following Stage IV lung cancer diagnosis, announced by family  —  Fox News Flash top headlines for February 17  —  Rush Limbaugh, the monumentally influential media icon who transformed talk radio …
 
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 More News: 
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Court filing says a Facebook manager warned that the company reported revenues it “should have never made” by overstating how many users advertisers could reach
Todd Spangler / Variety:
UFC signs partnership with TikTok, under which it will produce live content including interviews and training segments for the platform
Sean Burch / The Wrap:
Triller CEO says the company never inflated user numbers after a report said the app had half the 50M users it claimed
Reuters:
Belarusian court sentences two journalists who filmed protests to two years in prison; they were accused of orchestrating the protests by filming them
 Earlier Picks: 
Brian Steinberg / Variety:
WarnerMedia, known for Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, plans a preschool brand, Cartoonito, and will work to attract more young girls and families as viewers
ProPublica:
ProPublica says Richard Tofel, its founding general manager and president since 2013, will retire from the company when a successor is found
 

 
From Techmeme:

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
Sources: EU may accept Apple's proposal to open its NFC payments tech to rivals, and may close its antitrust probe in May, letting Apple avoid hefty fines

George Steer / Financial Times:
Nvidia closed down 10% on Friday, falling the most since March 2020 and losing more than $200B of its market value, as investors pull back from AI bets

James Hunt / The Block:
Bitcoin's fourth halving is now complete, lowering miners' block subsidy rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC; the third halving was on May 2020

 
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