Paris (AFP)

In the lens of justice and targeted by many critics, the giants of the web multiply the ads favorable to the media, like Facebook, which launches Monday in France its regional press assistance program.

The social network will invest 2 million euros to help regional newspapers develop their digital subscriptions, a French component of a vast program of aid to the local press - 300 million over three years - announced at the beginning of the year .

Ten press groups (Ouest France, South West, La Dépêche du Midi, La Voix du Nord, Provence, the Ebra group, Paris-Normandie, La Nouvelle République du Center, Center France and Le Courrier Picard) and a Belgian group ( Sud Presse) were selected for this project.

Specifically, from Monday and for 12 weeks, these publishers will be coached by experts in digital subscriptions and more specifically trained on the projects of their choice, for which they will receive a scholarship. New York Times director Tim Griggs, a digital media consultant, leads the program.

Facebook ran a similar program in Germany before the summer, while it invested 6 million euros over 2 years in the UK to finance the hiring of 80 journalists to follow geographical areas that had not media coverage.

"It shows clearly our commitment to the media, it will not solve all the problems they face, we do not have the solution for everything and I do not think we should have it, but we can contribute to the answer, "explains Jesper Doubs, director of Europe, Middle East and Africa Facebook Media Partnerships.

He wants to launch the program of support to the local press in another European country by the end of the year.

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In France, the social network has also ordered Le Monde, BFMTV and Brut, videos to feed its platform Watch from Monday.

In the United States, Facebook has announced the hiring of journalists for its future news tab: "We want to be sure that the articles we propose in the section + Top news + are judiciously chosen", explains Jesper Doubs, stating that it was a task too complicated for an artificial intelligence.

The platform will also pay publishers to use their content, a measure that should remain confined to the United States: "That we do it elsewhere, it remains to be seen because it is a test," he says.

On the side of Google, a long-standing measure demanded by the profession was announced last week: a change of algorithm that will promote the original source of information in research.

The two giants, in the sights of European authorities and subject of antitrust investigations in the United States, tend a little hand to the media who accuse them of weakening them by siphoning advertising revenues.

It is also for them to relay a more reliable news, while they are regularly pointed to the proliferation of "infox" (false information).

These announcements also come as the digital giants will have to pay publishers in Europe, especially in France who transposed the directive this summer, a "neighboring right" to copyright.

"The value you create is now captured by platforms and search engines, which reuse your content without paying, even if they generate significant advertising revenue," denounced Thursday before the press bosses the Minister of Culture Franck Riester, saying that "the objective of the neighboring right is to guarantee a fair sharing of value".

"We have yet to negotiate a fair remuneration from the digital players.In this new stage, the unity of the French press will be decisive, because the platforms will have every interest in dividing you," he warned.

© 2019 AFP