A written complaint has been filed with a committee set up by the government to examine the issue of ‘fake news’ by news publishers in Britain. The newspaper publishers, under the News Media Alliance (NMA) umbrella, now want the dominance of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) in the advertising and media sectors looked into. This most likely because mainstream media cannot compete with them on a level playing field and need the government’s intervention. Over 1,000 newspapers are represented by the industry’s umbrella body.’

Google News licensing fee

The group of newspaper publishers are calling on both the competition regulator and the communications regulator to extend their regulatory authority over Facebook and Google since they are wielding great influence in the media and advertising marketplace. The newspaper publishers also want to be paid a licensing fee by the duo since the two internet giants use their content for commercial purposes.

“The NMA would be happy to explore licensing schemes, potentially via NLA Media Access, to ensure that publishers’ investment in news is adequately recognized,” NMA’s letter to committee read.

Via NLA Medic Access, news publishers are paid a certain amount every time an excerpt of an article is republished by a clipping service. Across Europe, several countries have tried unsuccessfully to force Google to pay news publishers for news stories’ excerpts carried on the tech giants Google News website.

‘Fake news’ menace

NMA’s letter to the parliamentary committee on sport, media and culture was in response to a House of Commons inquiry that began in January to examine fake news and a solution to the problem. The news publishers umbrella body blamed internet firms for the ‘fake news’ menace since all that the perpetrators were doing was to game the algorithms belonging to Facebook, Google, and other internet companies in order to link users with ‘fake news’ stories.

And despite acknowledging that the fake news menace was yet to affect Britain at the same level as the United States, NMA said the powerful duopoly of Google and Facebook was ‘placing the country at risk’.

In Thursday’s trading session shares of Alphabet Inc edged up by 0.49% to close the day’s session at $857.84 a share.