SIYABULELA MAKUNGA

The socioeconomic gains of SA’s young democracy must be preserved and solidified.

To achieve this, South Africans must be unapologetic about protecting their freedoms as enshrined in the supreme law of the Republic, the constitution. One of these freedoms is the freedom of the press and other media.

News media is essential for democracy and serves as the cornerstone of public accountability and informed citizens. Yet, the global transition to digital platforms has severely undermined traditional revenue models and eroded the financial position of news media.

That’s why the Media and Digital Platforms Market Inquiry (MDPMI)’s recently released final report represents a landmark step toward rebalancing digital markets, protecting fair competition, and rebuilding the long-term sustainability of SA’s news media.

The MDPMI’s final report is a culmination of 24 months of extensive evidence gathering through information requests, public and in-camera hearings, expert submissions, and consultations with industry stakeholders.

It also included a consumer survey, a focus group, and a provisional report process that enabled broader public input from media publishers, broadcasters, the digital platforms themselves, and academia.

The MDPMI found that major global platforms such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, X and AI companies dominate key gateways through which South Africans access information, namely search, social media, and AI-powered tools. In search, Google maintains a dominant position but does not compensate South African media for the news content it displays or summarises.

Referral traffic to media websites has declined sharply as users increasingly consume AI-generated summaries or remain on Google’s own platforms. Furthermore, Google’s algorithmic structure tends to favour large foreign outlets over local or vernacular media, deepening inequality in content visibility and advertising reach.

In terms of social media, platforms such as Meta, YouTube, X and TikTok play a massive role in distributing news to South Africans, particularly within community and vernacular audiences.

While these platforms gain immense engagement value from news, few South African outlets are accredited or technically enabled to monetise their content on the platforms.

Both Meta and X have deprioritised posts containing news links, substantially reducing referral traffic to publishers’ sites. The SABC relies heavily on YouTube for content distribution but earns minimal revenue-share compensation.

Social media algorithms also foster the spread of misinformation and disinformation by promoting sensationalist material over credible sources, imposing social costs that the media must absorb in combating fake news.

The inquiry also found that AI chatbots and large language models have scraped online news content without compensation, using it to train AI systems and generate responses to user queries.

Though news represents a small portion of total training data, this practice raises significant questions about the future value of original journalism.

Google’s dominance across the AdTech stack has entrenched dependency and raised costs for media, with its bundled systems giving preferential treatment to its own exchange.

While SA cannot resolve these global distortions alone, aligning with international regulatory and legal efforts could help restore fairness.

After extensive engagement and two months of negotiations with global platforms and stakeholders, the Competition Commission has finalised a comprehensive package of remedies designed to restore fairness, transparency, and sustainability in SA’s media ecosystem.

Most major platforms have agreed on the remedies and will implement them immediately post-launch. In my next column I will share more information about the remedies. In the meantime, please visit our website for more information about the inquiry and the final report: www.compcom.co.za/final-report-launch/