There is an issue in that, in part, Facebook and Google attract customers to their sites through providing news or at least providing links to news.
The news they provide is from other organisations which have invested funds into reporting the news.
But, the news organisations rely on advertising revenue, Facebook and Google are now getting most of this revenue.
So who pays for the reporting of news?
This is what the government sees as the problem but I'm not convinced that somehow forcing Facebook and Google to pay the media companies for news is going to do much to fix the problem. Certainly the media companies have not adapted to the changing world very well and we see they have various strategies: New Ltd paywall, Fairfax limits the number of articles you can view (easy to get around) and The Guardian asks for donations/subscriptions.
I suspect that the model of paying for news, for example when you pay to purchase a newspaper or a subscription, is gone. News is moving to free platforms, mind you, it has always been free on Free to Air TV, but that relies on advertising revenue.
DS