, Columnist
A Facebook Tax Is a Good Way to Kill Dying Newspapers
Better for the U.K. to force digital giants to share more ad revenue with content creators.
Making the BBC bigger won’t help.
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Getty Images
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In the U.K., the demise of local newspapers can be broadly attributed to two forces: easy access to free online news, and advertisers shifting their spending to the web from print.
Which is why Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s proposal to tax Facebook Inc. and Google parent Alphabet Inc. in order to fund “public interest journalism” identifies the problem, but is wildly amiss with the solution.