this is bbc news. the headlines: excited fans in argentina and france are counting down the hours to today's world cup final in doha. two of the game's great players, lionel messi of argentina and france's kylian mbappe, are also vying for the golden boot, the trophy for the tournament's top goal—scorer. china is seeing a sharp increase of positive covid cases, just 10 days after suddenly easing its strict lockdown measures following a wave of protests, with the capital beijing being one of the worst affected areas. in shanghai, officials have ordered most schools the award—winning iranian film actress taraneh alidoosti has been arrested after publicly condemning the first execution

of a protester in iran earlier this month. an iranian news agency says ms alidoosti, was detained for publishing what it called false and distorted content and inciting chaos. now on bbc news, the media show. hello. a transatlantic programme today. we've got the us company that's big in britain. the boss of google this side of the pond is with us, and we've also got the british newspapers who are trying to make it big in the us. we'll be finding out why the publisher of the mirror and the express think that the americans are ready for some british style tabloid journalism in a bit. but first, let's start with matt brittin. he's the president of google for europe, the middle east and africa, which makes him a pretty important guy. matt, welcome

to the media show. hi, katie. thanks for having me. you're very welcome. what's the last thing you ever googled? well, actually, i look you up and i found that you've just been promoted to media correspondent and editor at the bbc. so, congratulations. i have. culture and media editor. i feel pretty, pretty well very pleased and honoured to have got it. so, thank you for googling me. i read a quote from one of your colleagues in the us earlier this year, and he said that 40% of young people, when they're looking for a place for lunch, they don't go to google maps or the search engine, they go to tiktok or instagram. are you worried? i think we've always been focused on trying to give users really useful information. i started at google 16 years ago, and that was the days where we access the internet through a computer only. dial up. and google really was a sort of gateway. but if you look at how we search today, if you're going on holiday airbnb or booking.com or a gift to amazon or whatever. so, we've got hugely different ways of accessing information, including through publishers as well. so what we try to do is two things, innovation and trust in search. make it as relevant

and helpful as possible. and some of the ways we do that, for example, eight billion times a month now, people use their camera to search with google lens. you point out at something and it can tell you what it is. and you can then do multi search, which is a new feature, where you can say, let's take a photograph of this green plant pot. and, so, get this bit in pink. but the young, the young don't seem to be doing it. they're going through tiktok and instagram. the young have got more choice than ever before. they're still using google, but they're also using many other services. and i think that's one of the things that's good. it's competition and innovation, often using ai, and gives us more choice than ever before. but does it worry you they're not using it? i think we need to be kind of constantly worrying about making our products something that's useful for everyone and trusted. and that's a key part of what i do every day. and when it comes to your own job, is it a big part of it to lobby governments in europe to make sure google gets what it wants when it comes to regulation or how much tax you have to pay, for example? no, i think what we've seen in the last few years, rightly,

is governments around the world wanting to put in place rules of the road for technology. and it's become so important. you've seen that through the pandemic, you know, the tech—celeration. it's part of everyday life for everyone. and, of course, what they want to do is understand what the technology can do. how do we make sure that technology is harnessed for good and we fight the bad? and part of myjob is to explain those things to policymakers as they work on those new bills. and what we try to do is be in a position where they want to hear from us because we've got expertise, but we don't expect the rules that have already written in the way that we would like. and we've got some big new bills at the moment in europe, the digital services act, which is all about the responsibilities of platforms and in the uk, the online safety bill, which is even broader than the european bill and covers a lot of areas of responsibility. and we really welcome that. you know, the objectives of that bill are about keeping you safe online, helping to ensure that you have privacy and freedom of expression. and we will come on to that in a minute. ijust wondered because i obviously mentioned tax and i know you probably have a very well rehearsed

answer as to how much tax google does pay in the uk, but could you afford to pay more, especially in a cost of living crisis? i think it's important in the world today, everybody needs to be funding the huge cost of covid and the crisis in energy. and so i think companies should be doing more. and that's something which governments have to decide. but i think it's a political choice. tech is sometimes in the headlines around taxes for not how much we pay, but where it's paid and the debate has always been is enough paid in the countries like the uk where we make the money versus the home market, the us, and there's been international accords to shift that. and the uk has also put more taxes on tech companies. so we pay hundreds of millions in the uk, but i think all of us are going to have to pay more given what's ahead. and you talked about the online safety bill, some people know is the online harms bill as well. you know, it's been going through, well, quite a few changes and been a very lengthy bill going through or not going through parliament. the fact that a bill to regulate the internet is even necessary is evidence that you're not able to keep your own house in order, isn't it?

no, i totally disagree. i mean, what we've got is technology. lots of the rules of the road were written before smartphones. so we've got a new technology that can do new things. and of course, you therefore need to put in place a set of regulations that set standards that protect us. as i say, this is important about keeping you safe online, protecting privacy and also protecting freedom of expression. and there are some important trade—offs in there that governments should rightly be making. that doesn't mean to say that we haven't waited. so at google, we don't wait for regulation. we try to build products that are trustworthy, with clear products, clear policies that are transparent, and then report on how we do on those things, and i can explain a bit more about how we do that, and it's useful. well, i wonderfirst, how do you think, how are you going to make the content moderation work in light of this regulation? if it makes it through. we haven't waited. we already have in place really thorough content moderation. over 20,000 people globally look at content moderation on youtube and google properties.

and, i was personally involved in this. so, a number of years ago now, we saw that violent extremists were using video to try to radicalise people on youtube and other platforms. and we decided we needed to have a policy even though that content wasn't illegal. how do you decide what is and isn't allowed? it's a free speech world, but is that harmful? so we worked with 150 expert agencies. europol, the home office, institute for strategic dialogue and so on, to come up with some policies to define that. we then trained people to classify videos, and then when they could do it accurately, we trained machines and now we report on how effective that policy is. and i can tell you that 90% of videos that violate that policy never are seen by a single human. so we can do that in the context of a legal framework, but then codes of practice and transparency with regulators. and i think that's the way forward with online safety bill. set some clear responsibilities, but then you need to develop policies which will change over time. so would you say the system is working at the moment in terms of protecting people? no, because i think that's, we've done that ourselves, but that's not consistently a standard across the

different tech platforms. and we see, you know, twitter in the news and others. so i think there's an importance of having a set of standards for everyone. it's also important, i think, that the larger players, the more popular platforms like youtube, have a higher bar because more people are using them every day. and i think that's appropriate. and then when you say you're talking to regulators or you're lobbying, actually what we're trying to do is explaining the kind of thing that i've just talked you through and what we've learned about how technology can help. so i think in a combination of governments, civil society and tech companies working together to address these challenges as they arise. so you're aware, i mean, would you point fingers at other companies that aren't doing it as well as you? i mean, of course, you know, if you talk about molly russell, for example, you know, the coroner ruled that the site, some of the sites she was looking at were not safe, as the coroner put it. i mean, that's a tragic case and my heart goes out to her family and anybody affected by those kinds of issues. i think ian russell, herfather, has been a really effective campaigner for stronger safety standards online, and i think that's part of what the online safety bill

is seeking to do. and as a parent and as a technology company, we take our responsibility seriously. we already do a huge amount in that area. our sites were not involved in that particular case. but i mean, let's talk about how technology can be a force for good in those moments. so, if you search, and you're in that moment of crisis, terms around suicide. we've worked with the samaritans and others to make sure the first thing you see is a link to talk to somebody at the samaritans and content that can be helpful in those moments. so technology is neutral, and it can be helpful in those moments of crisis and need, and that's what we need to make sure it can do. and the government clearly is talking tough about what sanctions tech companies would face. i mean, what punishment do you think google should face if you broke the new rules that the government wants to introduce? i mean, that's for governments to put in place. they're talking about big fines. yeah, that's right. and we face, you know, obviously fines and a whole range of sanctions already in current rules. but i think it's important with platforms to get the balance right. and this is something for government. but, let's just talk

about this for a second. not in the case of child safety, which i think wejust covered it, but if a regulator decides that you should have removed some content and you haven't and you get an enormous fine for it, for a small platform, let's say, that means you'll tend towards removing content which is marginal. and that's what the freedom of speech lobby have been arguing, that there's a real concern around having very big consequences on things which aren't very clear. there's no legal kind of definition of some of this content. that you have the other alternative, which is less access, and a non—democratic country might use that in a very worrying way. i want to ask you about twitter, because elon musk has been very clear he wants to vastly expand the parameters of free speech on the platform. i wonder how far would twitter have to push the boundaries, for example allowing hate speech, for you to pull it from google�*s app store? well, we have very clear policies on our app store. it's like a retailer as to what we require different

apps to do in order to qualify to be there. and that includes content moderation policies. so we already have policies that allow us to do that. and i don't have the policy in my head. but... but i mean, you did remove, for example, the right wing social media platform, parler from the app store. i wondered if you were actively... are you actively looking at twitter? well, actually, so parler and a couple of other apps initially didn't comply with our policies, i believe. i'm not entirely certain but i believe they are now there because they have now built some content moderation policies. so we will keep those things under review. and i want to talk a bit about google�*s relationship with news publishers in the uk. google is the single biggest source of traffic for every major news website in this country. the research firm insider intelligence estimates you made more than £8 million in ad revenue here last year. you dominate online search advertising, as i said. it means newspapers don't make money from traditional ads, and it's hard to make a local newspaper, for example, profitable. do you feel bad about that? well, i don't agree with all of the things you said there. but i mean, let me first say i was a publisher. i worked for what is now reach before ijoined google 16 years ago. and we are actually probably the world's biggest funder ofjournalism. and let me just explain

a little bit about what we do. first, when you come to google search and ask us about news, and it happens 80 billion times a month in europe. we send you to news publishers who are who they say they are. and when somebody comes from us to a news publisher, estimated to be worth three to $0.05 per click because of how they monetise. that's the first thing. so, huge amounts of traffic that's qualified. and we really work hard when you search for news to make sure quality content is at the top, but that's not enough. we've also helped with the advertising, and you'll see ads from google on apps and on sites from publishers. the majority of the revenue goes to the publisher. i can't give you the full uk numbers, but the top five publishers over the last three years, nearly 250 million from google ads, and that's complimentary to their own advertising revenue. and then we trained 4000 journalists, and we've given grants and funding to 240 smaller publishers. so, we do a huge amount to try to support publishing. you're giving those grants because you're aware that you have decimated the market. no, i mean, ijust don't accept that. what people have is more choice than ever of news sources. and we all have to, you know,

you have to at the bbc and all the publishers have to compete for that audience. what we've tried to do is ensure that when people are looking for those sources, they can find them, find the sources that they trust, and help them to monetise. and, actually, the editor of the times has said recently, you know, journalism is thriving. i just saw the guardian had its highest profits for 20 years recently. so, economically, publishers are doing well. but we should be concerned that quality content continues to thrive and we fight misinformation. and that's the other part of what we do, is trying to ensure that disinformation is reduced and removed. 0k, matt brittin, thank you so much from google. i just want to bring in some other people here. listening to that is claire atkinson, chief media correspondent at insider. claire, i wonder what you think of what matt was saying and clearly we do believe there's a fraught relationship between tech companies and news publishers, particularly for localjournalism. yes. i mean, the fact is that that google, meta and amazon take 50% of all of the digital ad dollars _

that's a huge problem for even the biggest players and publishers in the business. i mean, if you're gannett, if you run usa today, you are looking at a very slim margins _ they laid off 400 people. they axed 400 further positions in the last few weeks. i think if you are a journalist sitting behind a desk, you are looking at how google, google's algorithm essentially controls what people see. the search engine optimisation, which is basically when you go to the google search box and you type what's the best pizza in london, google will bring up content. news publishers rely on google to send them traffic. and so this is a very big debate right now. news corp, which owns the times and newspapers in australia, have been fighting a battle to get big tech, to pay for content, to make sure that if the likes of google and facebook are monetising content, that some of it comes to them. i guess they would argue that

not enough is coming to them. and so, we'll see what happens. it's interesting that amazon is kind of a new entrant here sucking up some of those digital ad dollars too. matt, what would you say to claire? i mean, i don't accept all of that at all. firstly, there's no fixed pie of advertising. what's actually happened is that there's been an explosion of new companies advertising. we have most of our customers are small businesses advertising for the first time. so it's not a zero sum game. but as i've tried to explain earlier, i think we do a huge amount to try to help publishers make money. it's not for us to fix the business model of publishing, but many are being successful. there are some publishers owned by private equity and so on, where there's a lot of cost management going on as well. but i think if you think about it, citizens have got more choice ofjournalism than ever before. it still comes from really high quality outlets. if the editor of the times, which is a murdoch company, is saying, you know, journalism is thriving, i think that's encouraging. but i don't think our responsibility end there.

we always need to be doing more, being more transparent about why a story ranks higher when people search for it and so on. thank you. i mean, i think we should turn at this point to the question i posed at the top of the show, which is, are british tabloids really about to a crack america? you know, this is the news this month that the newspaper group reach is launching american versions of some of its titles like the mirror, the express and the irish star. so i'm joined by liz hazelton, editorial director, the express.co.uk, christina garibaldi, correspondent for us weekly, which is a celebrity news and entertainment magazine in america. and david yelland, former editor of the sun from 1998 to 2003, who runs kitchen table partners, a communications company. and liz, if we start with you, what is the untapped opportunity as you see it here? so i think for us we just see . it as a brilliant moment for us to move into a new market. it's interesting that we start . to talk about localjournalism. we've probably spent the last five years trying to work out i what that model looks like now. so, geographically, we're . pretty well placed in the uk and for us itjust seemed to be time to look at the us. - what can we bringl to the table there? we're obviously not the first to do it. i

daily mail 2010, i think, - the sun about three years ago. so, we're coming into- the market and trying to find what our position is really to start off with. - and i think it's interesting. i mean, the irish star is - a particularly interesting one for us because at the moment it'sjust print _ but actually we think. there's a market there. there's an expat community. there's obviously a lot - of people that are interested in irish affairs in the states, and we think that _ will work for them. and then for the mirror... sorry, i didn't mean to interrupt. i was just going to ask in a bit more detail in terms of how it will work. is it about dedicated reporters chasing american stories, or will you be repackaging british content for a us audience? will you be writing lots of stories about the british royal family, for example? it is very much abouti being based in the us and writing for a us audience, so i think we're looking at - quite considerable scale here. so i don't see any pointl in launching at any level without having people on the ground looking for those stories, connectingl with an audience and building loyalty around that. and i think for each of those brands, we think we've got. a way into the market that

will give us _ something different. it's also interesting, - i would add, to say that we've seen audience from the us grow for each of those titles - over a period of time, - which is really why we've made the decision tojump now. and christina garibaldi, your correspondent for us weekly, which is a celebrity news and entertainment magazine in america. what's your take on all of this? well, welcome, welcome, welcome over. you know, it is a lot of competition. and, you know, it's interesting because american gossip magazines, american tabloid magazines are sometimes viewed a little bit differently than uk tabloid magazines. you know, uk tabloids are notoriously a little bit more aggressive, some kind of pushing the limits at times, which american tabloids do as well. but, you know, we're always going for those salacious headlines, those grab worthy headlines, and that's what we really want to do. but, you know, having a lot of competition, we're going to be fighting for those headlines and those clicks and those views and things like that. so it's going to be interesting to see where everybody kind of finds himself. yeah.

i mean, is there room for it, do you think? i mean, can't american publications like your own cover this content pretty well on their own? no, that is true. but i do feel like sometimes the british tabloids do take it a little bit further. you know, the daily mail, we see we're constantly looking at stories from the daily mail us because they're have boots on the ground and, you know, getting those photos that maybe we wouldn't necessarily get because they're a little bit more intrusive. and we've had a lot about that from harry and meghan in their documentary. yes, we have heard a lot about that. but, you know, our audience is obsessed with the royal family. so anything royal family, we kind of our audience salivate over because we're obsessed with it. but, you know, it will be interesting. i think that there's always room for everything, but it'll be, like i said, interesting to see where kind of everybody finds themselves in this new landscape. claire atkinson from insider. i mean, is it a good move by reach, do you think? because obviously, you know, liz already mentioned there's already a number of british titles operating successfully in america, not least the us

sun and the mail online. yeah. i do think there's a gap in the market for super fast journalism, aggressive tabloid journalism. i read the mail online every day. it isn'tjust photographs of celebrities. there's business stories, there's politics. there's a little bit of everything. sports. it's a vibrant mix. the sun is already over here. the sun is the eighth fastest growing publication in november. the numbers are astounding. it was up 36% in november. they get a bit of a lift from the new york post, which is a sibling. i see some stories in the new york post about things happening in britain. so i guess people clicked those links. at the end of the day, this is about the business models of scale and advertisers and not going to be bothering with outlets that only generate a couple of million visits a month.

they want big audiences to put their ads against, and the more automated this becomes, the more scale people have to get. so, you know, bbc also is growing in the us and also has a plan to get bigger. so it does feel like this is a moment. david yelland, you know, you've got experience of tabloid journalism on both sides of the atlantic because you were deputy editor of the news corp owned new york post from 1995 to 1998 before becoming editor of the sun. surely the idea of launching british tabloids in america has been tried many times before. what do you think about it? the world has changed because of the digital. revolution, so you can now- launch them and you can launch these titles at a very low. cost, even if you have 100 people on the ground. the cost of doing that. and you can pull out very easily if it doesn't work. i think we can't have this| conversation without just mentioning those british titles that do make a lot of this - is all about making money. and the fact is, in - the new digital world, you make more money at the top end than the mass market. - so the bbc and the i economist are growing

massively in the us. the ft has at least a quarter of its subs are in the us. - for the economist, it's i more than half and know that's $60 a month. so that is a lot at least. at least so. and they're edited by british people a few miles, - a half a mile from where i am in london. - so the brits already dominate the higher end of the uk - of the us market and it's taken a lot of work, but it isn't - mentioned a great deal. the bbc of course, don't charge. - then the other thingj to think about is this the new york times is investing massively in london and any - of your listeners here i in london or in the uk. why would they turn to a us publication to find anything i out when, you know, that's the thing you've got - to think about. so in the other way round, why would they turn all media as a local? so one thing i've learned, | like, you know, tip o'neill said all politics is local, i all media is local people. so i was on new york post for a long time. | you know, they didn't keep one

injersey, in newjersey, - let alone, you know. so this is about for reach. it makes common sense j because they can extend their reach into the us. you know, there's a i mean the irish star is a really- interesting play because there's a massive irish. community in the us and they're going to put people _ on the ground in three major. cities where there's, you know, that that is a very smart thing to d0~ _ but you know, the top sites in the us are - msnbc, the bbc and cnn. we're lucky in this country because we have the bbc. so we have that sort of water| cooler place that you go when something terrible happens. like the awful asylum seeker story in the channel today. . millions of people around i the world will go to the bbc to find out what's happening because this is a trusted - site in the us. you don't have that. there is not one single place that people go . to lots of places and thatl makes for a very actually, you know, that's caused some l of the problems that we've seen in the us democracyl in the last few years.

but that's a whole other issue. i've got to say one thing quickly. - i'm old enough to remember going to a news corps get. together in sun valley, - idaho, in 98, when sergey brin and larry page, who set google up, came, and they lecture - to all the news corps editors about how they were going l to change the world. and we all sat there . and we looked at each otherand said, no, no, | it's never gonna happen. katie. i'm sorry. go ahead, david. but the journalism survived, isn't it? i it continues to survive. so you know that. and it will. it will. things will. well, that's a positive. i mean, ijust wondered whether, you know, christina was talking about the sort of reputation of the british tabloids. do you think it's a problem for your venture that the british tabloids have a bit of a bad reputation in america getting worse if you watch harry and meghan?

i think i don't quite say it like that, which is probably no surprise to anyone. but i think what we are known for is doing good stories, turning them around quickly and doing a range of stories which has already been mentioned. so news, shows and sport and offering that complete package, really. so i'm not too concerned about that. i think we're well placed now to to capitalise on what is great opportunity. christina?. yeah. no, i mean, we've always looked to our british friends for headlines and stories and we have to follow up considerably. and, you know, and i'm sure you guys all do as well. so like i said, you know, it'sjust going to be more competition and more ways to get stories out there. and we'lljust have to wait and see what happens. and matt in the studio with me here is matt. matt has something to say. i think about this great google words. what have you got to tell us? i mean, i think there's a key moment for the uk at the moment, isn't there? which is like how we define ourselves in the world of the future. and what this conversation has illustrated is that people want british quality content and the technology is enabling

british businesses large and small, whether it's journalism or video or gaming, also e—commerce. we can be world leaders in all of these things and a world where 60% of the planet is online and the rest are coming. and i think the challenge in the publishing industry, as david rightly illustrated, is fear at the beginning or kind of thinking it's a joke. but actually the way publishers have embraced technology, that's why the future ofjournalism, i think i'm optimistic about and i think many of our panelists here today are. and claire atkinson from insider. what would you say to that? yeah, i mean, i had a look at he sun today to see what they were publishing for the american audience. and it is the usual mix of the kardashians in their underwear and a bunch of murder stories. so i would hope that brits coming to the us, to my home country, will come up with a broader range of topics that will excite audiences in the states. and david, just a brief last word. do you think british tabloid journalism translates for an american audience? i'm not sure it does if i'm honest. - i mean, it's a very. the us and the uk. like churchill's famous words, you know, they're two - separate countries separated

by a common language. - the culture in the us and journalism. - journalistic culture - in the us is very different. they're terribly serious about what they do. i but, you know, as brits, we're pretty good. - why are there so many brits editing us publications? - we do produce great- journalists, not much else, but we do produce great journalists. _ oh, come on. we produce a lot more. liz, in 20 seconds, tell me, what would success look like for you? what will it look like? great stories, new great stuff on the ground over there. obviously a good audience and clearly some good, good revenue from it, i guess we'll have to say. and what counts as a good audience, can you put a number on it at this point? probably not, because i think there's obviously 320 million people out there. there's plenty of opportunity for us to grow. well, best of luck with it. thank you to all of you. i'm afraid that's all we've got. time for matt britton, president of emea business and operations at google. liz hazelton, editorial director at express.co.uk.

claire atkinson, chief media correspondent at insider. david yelland, former editor of the sun, and christina garibaldi, correspondent for us weekly. that's it for now. goodbye.

good morning. welcome to breakfast, with rogerjohnson and rachel burden. 0ur headlines today — hundreds of soldiers and civil servants are to be drafted in to cover for striking workers over christmas, but unions say they're not sufficiently trained to step in. hundreds gather for a vigil to remember four children, who died falling into a frozen lake in solihull. tributes are paid to a young mum of two, who died after a crush at london's brixton academy. after four weeks of drama in qatar, it all comes down to this. it's the final of the world cup. can lionel messi finally get his hands on football's biggest prize, or will france be crowned champions once again?