I don't really understand how you can "negotiate in good faith" how to pay when the government is holding a gun to the head of one side saying that they will ha

I don't really understand how you can "negotiate in good faith" how to pay when the government is holding a gun to the head of one side saying that they will have to pay. If the government wants to tax internet giants to pay for traditional news media, it should just do that. IMO, news media is basically a public good, in the sense that it's non-rival and basically non-excludable. Unfortunately, it's also a relatively low personal value public good. What I mean is that the typical person cannot make decisions that benefit themselves based on the news, and the news provides little entertainment value compared to e.g. video games or television. That is not to say it has no value, just that the value it produces is low compared to what it costs to make. In the past, news media was more valuable, because there was less other media around. Now there are so many media channels (videogames, cable, broadcast, music, social, YouTube, etc.) that even if they were all equally entertaining to the news, news' share of the whole pie would be smaller. But they're not equally entertaining, they're more entertaining. So news loses out. Despite its low entertainment value, on a social level, there is definitely some value to having an informed public. So maybe the government should subsidize the creation of informative content, as it does with the BBC in the UK. And maybe funding for this should be partially derived from taxes on internet companies. But it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that the government would basically mandate a transfer of wealth from internet companies directly to the wallets of news media owners.