The owner of The Charleston Gazette-Mail and other West Virginia news publications filed a lawsuit in federal court on Friday against Google and Facebook, accusing companies of profiting from “anti-competitive and monopolistic practices” that have hurt the journalistic sector.
The publisher, HD Media, said the lawsuit was the first of its kind to be filed by a news company. The lawsuit focuses on Google’s centrality in the online advertising market, as well as an agreement between Google and Facebook that is the center of an antitrust lawsuit filed by 10 state attorney generals. It is estimated that the two technology companies together accounted for more than half of all digital advertising spending in 2019.
“Google and Facebook have monopolized the digital advertising market, thereby strangling a primary source of revenue for newspapers across the country,” said HD Media in the lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia.
“There is no longer a competitive market in which newspapers can compete fairly for online advertising revenue,” continued the process.
The rise in digital media has resulted in sharp drops in revenue for many newspaper companies, which previously relied on print ads and print subscriptions to stay on the market. More than one in four American newspapers closed between 2004 and 2018, and tens of thousands of newsroom jobs have disappeared.
In addition to The Gazette-Mail, which in 2018 won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, HD Media-owned newspapers include The Herald-Dispatch and The Logan Banner.
“We invite all other newspapers in America to join this cause,” said Doug Reynolds, managing partner at HD Media, in a statement on Friday. “We are fighting not only for the future of the press, but also for the preservation of our democracy.”
Technology companies have undergone new scrutiny in recent months. In October, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the company of illegally protecting its monopoly on Internet search and the digital advertising market. In two lawsuits filed in December, dozens of states have accused Google of abusing its dominance of the online advertising business and frustrating competitors in search.
Last month, lyrical annotation company Genius Media and two left-wing magazines, The Nation and The Progressive, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google – as well as its parent company, Alphabet, and a sister company, YouTube – citing which one is process called “anticompetitive conduct” in the digital advertising market.
Google forwarded a request for comment to a statement the company issued this month in response to a separate complaint. In the statement, the company said its advertising business “helps websites and applications make money and finance high-quality content”. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.