How Big Tech is changing journalism

Published 24 June 2026 · tech

Technology companies are shaping how news is presented and digested, leaving media outlets little option but to comply. At DW's Global Media Forum in Bonn

Technology companies are shaping how news is presented and digested, leaving media outlets little option but to comply. At DW's Global Media Forum in Bonn, participants discussed how to resist and adapt. It's been about two decades since the largest information technology companies started making decisions about how ordinary people get their news — how news is made, how it is disseminated and how it is received, with their domination of everything from search engines to social media and more recently artificial intelligence. The influence of these tech giants reaches beyond media into the political sphere, as the heads of these influential companies get involved in elections and put governments under pressure. So how can media and the state in general preserve their independence in a scenario like this? And what kinds of relationships should journalists have with the five so-called Big Tech companies: Alphabet (Google's parent company), Apple, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft? At German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle's annual event, the Global Media Forum, which began Tuesday in Bonn, this was a leading question. Fake videos about robot soldiers in China generated by AI: Disinformation remains a major challenge Image: imago / X Media preparing 'for battle' Even just the term is concerning, Courtney C. Radsch, director of the US-based Center for Media and Digital Governance, said at the event. "Society does not mutually append the word big to an industry out of respect and admiration," she noted during the panel, "Between innovation and dependence: Journalism's love-hate relationship with Big Tech," which was moderated by DW journalist and presenter, Jaafar Abdul Karim.

"We do it out of fear, in preparation for a battle," Radsch explained. GMF: How Big Tech is shaping journalism and news consumption To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Online platforms are now hugely powerful and do everything from deciding how visible certain forms of content should be to distributing and monetizing it. Genuine cooperation between platforms and journalism is difficult to find, Radsch suggested. "Are we partners when we're cleaning up all the crud and disinformation spreading online?" she asked. And in another example, Radsch points out how large language models, or AI systems, are often trained on journalistic content and usually without any compensation being paid for the use of that content. Journalists play a crucial role in this training, she says, because the information they provide is what keeps the AIs grounded in facts and reality. "How do we know what we know?" Radsch asks. The whole system collapses when AI models train on content generated by AI models. "Like a photocopy of a painting of a picture, each generation [of the AI models is] drifting a little further from reality." AI needs us more than we need it, Radsch argues. "At least I like to think that," she concedes. Courtney C. Radsch: 'How do we know what we know?' Image: Stephanie Englert/DW Radsch's final statement is somewhat dramatic. "When monopoly power and political power start coalescing in the same companies, you're not looking at a competition problem anymore," she concluded, "you are looking at the architecture of technofascism." Cyriac Roeding, an entrepreneur and investor from Silicon Valley, called for a change in perspective and for the media to take greater responsibility.