West Wing‘s C.J. Cregg is doling out the cash in California
January 10, 2026
Australia is close to cutting cheques to news outlets under its News Media Assistance Program (“News MAP”), similar to Canada’s QCJO federal aid to journalism.
The highlights to News MAP are:
- $99 million ($92M CDN) over a three year period.
- $67 million is targeted for news outlets delivered as salary subsidies of $13,000 AUS ($12,000 CDN).
- $33 million to the Australian Associated Press, similar in staff complement to our Canadian Press.
- In addition to the $99 million, it’s anticipated that a one time $30M “innovation fund” will be announced in the next two months.
There are other, less headline grabbing, features:
- $3M of government advertising committed to news outlets for the next two years, a symbolic rather than substantial sum, but the kind of program that has been touted in other countries (including Canada, where Ontario has committed $50M annually).
- $10.5 million over 4 years, backdated to 2023, to the Australian Communications and Media Authority to implement a Media Diversity Measurement Framework. The ACMA has already released its first biennial report, a thoughtful document worth reading. It describes and analyses the state of news journalism in Australia.
- A three-year study of media literacy, possibly leading to a national media literacy policy in Australia.
Per journalist, the Australian News MAP is worth to news outlets about half of the dollar value of the Canadian QCJO program.
The News MAP program is being launched under the uncertainty shadowing Australia’s flagship public policy for news journalism, the News Media Bargaining Code. The NMBC was the policy template for Canada’s Online News Act.
In 2024 Meta refused to renew its payments to Australian publishers and broadcasters (reputed to be a third of the $200M AUS contributed by Meta and Google). Presumably Google is considering its options.
That $200M AUS was about twice the value of the $100M CDN Google payment in Canada, for a country two-thirds our size, so you get the picture of how the combined Canadian and Australian programs for government subsidy and Big Tech payments are comparable, if asymmetric.
The Australian government is signalling that News MAP is truly a time limited three-year program. The Albanese government, strengthened by its majority-election victory in 2025, is moving forward with public consultations on proposed legislation that would strengthen its NMBC by assessing financial charges on Google and Meta, regardless of whether the tech companies escalate by banning news links on their platforms.
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In 2024 MediaPolicy posted about the state of California’s attempt at imitating Canada’s Online News Act and Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code that compel Google and Meta to make mandatory licensing payments to news outlets.
The initial Californian scheme that earned the support of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom was valued at $250M over five years, combining matching contributions form the state budget (akin to Canada’s QCJO program), Google dollars, existing philanthropic projects, and the possibility of a $62 billion tech fund to support AI tools in the newsroom.
Then California faced a budget crisis, whittling down its matching contribution to $10M annually. Google obliged by cutting its own. The AI innovation fund is grounded too.
The Californian bill can now be officially designated a debacle. Politico has a story on how that happened, here.
One of the key problems, still unresolved, is that even the $20M in matching state and Google funds remains undistributed to Californian news outlets. The University of Berkeley was initially contemplated as the gatekeeper but withdrew after the state rejected the journalism school’s plan for bespoke allocations to favoured projects and news outlets.
Then the program distribution landed with the state librarian. Then it was moved to the Governor’s office of development, headed by former Bill Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers (the real-life C.J. Cregg of West Wing). Now Myers is trying to set up a third party to distribute the funds, however her office will retain the final say on allocating the $20M.
News outlets haven’t seen any of the money and Governor Newsom’s final term in office ends in 2027.
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Here’s an update on the battle between Netflix and Paramount to buy Warner Brothers’ studio and streaming businesses.
The board of Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD) has rejected a second Paramount bid, insisting that the Netflix offer is still better.
If the WBD board stays the course, there will not be any shareholder vote on the Paramount bid.
For WBD to go forward with the tentative deal with Netflix, Netflix must first get regulator approval of its bid document, send it to WBD shareholders, and then a special shareholder meeting will vote on the Netflix offer. Nothing is scheduled yet.
Paramount is focussing on persuading the WBD board, and shareholders, that WBD’s television assets that aren’t in the Netflix bid are worthless and Paramount’s offer is better because it takes those channels off the hands of shareholders.
If WBD and Netflix consummate their deal, the federal Department of Justice could consider an anti-trust court challenge.
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This blog post is copyrighted by Howard Law, all rights reserved. 2026.
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