More than 60 percent of staff losses at Taiwan’s major newspapers could be traced to the monopolization of online advertising by Google and Facebook, posing a threat to the nation’s media landscape and its democratic system that relies on the third estate, a journalism expert said.
In a research report released yesterday, National Taiwan University Graduate Institute of Journalism professor Lin Chao-chen (林照真) issued a “wake-up call” about the effects of online platforms on the nation’s news media.
Nearly 60 percent of traffic to newspapers’ online content goes through Google and Facebook, but the platforms do not pay for the right to