News-media roundup: Canada passes tech-news bill; fact-checking levels off; young people forsake news websites . . .

The Parliament of Canada has passed a bill to "require Google and Meta to pay media outlets for news content that they share or otherwise repurpose on their platforms," The Associated Press reports. The Senate approved Bill C-18 "amid a standoff between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government and Silicon Valley tech giants," AP reports. "Meta confirmed Thursday that it plans to comply with the bill by ending news availability on Facebook and Instagram for its Canadian users, as it had previously suggested. Meta would not offer details about the timeline for that move, but said it will pull local news from its site before the Online News Act takes effect," six months after it is signed by the governor-general, Canada's head of state.

•

"Fact-checking’s growth seems to have leveled off," reports the Duke Reporters' Lab.  Mark Stencel, Erica Ryan and Joel Luther counted 417 fact-checking news outlets around the world, down from a peak of 424 in 2022.

•

Young people are abandoning news websites in favor of social media and Tik Tok, reports Nic Newman of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. The institute's report has "evidence that users of TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat tend to pay more attention to celebrities and social media influencers than they do to journalists or media companies when it comes to news topics," Newman writes.

•

The Augusta Press, an online news outlet, has won the 2023 Freedom of Information Award from the Georgia Press Association for pressing its case against the Richmond County sheriff, who won't communicate with it because he dislikes its opinion writer.