MSM looking for a new handout

"I consider that [the so-called Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill] Bill is ill-conceived. It is a means of subsidising mainstream media which is having difficulty in adapting its business model to the Digital Paradigm. ...
    "The various initiatives and subsidies undertaken by the State - primarily in the form of the Public Interest Journalism Fund - have provided artificial support for mainstream media. Those subsidies have provided a disincentive for mainstream media to adapt to the Digitalk Information Paradigm in a more agile manner.
    "What the Bill proposes is a substitution of one subsidisation scheme for another. ...
    

"Because the problem is the free riding of mainstream media content by platforms like Google and Facebook the solution lies in the area of copyright and intellectual property. What is proposed by the Bill – which was introduced by Labour ... – is a bureaucracy to determine by what means and by how much the large digital platforms will subsidise mainstream media.
    "Reading the mainstream media submissions and listening to some of the oral presentations was somewhat depressing. But then, of course mainstream media would paint a gloomy picture. Who would not when there is a pot of gold at the end of the legislative rainbow.
    "Perhaps mainstream media should address the issue of why it is that public confidence in the news media is at an all time low rather than seeking yet another hand-out."

~ David Harvey from his post (and submission to) 'The Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill'