By Segun Adediran
The architecture of death row is not built of stone and steel, but of stagnant time. To be on death row is to live in the “After”—dead, yet living. You are a ghost inhabiting a body that the state has already marked as a tragic clerical error. It is the only place on Earth where the future is not a mystery, but a fixed point on a calendar: a Tuesday at dawn, a Thursday at midnight, creeping toward you with the silent, rhythmic inevitability of a tide.
On the row, the world shrinks to the size of a postage stamp. It is never truly silent, but the noise is dead. It is a paradox of hope—a matter of “just in case.” The cruelty of the row isn’t just the isolation; it is the litigation of hope.
Globally, journalism, society’s watchdog, is on death row: a case of hoping against hope. As the predatory rise of Generative AI (GAI) and Big Tech intensifies, newsrooms are navigating the architecture of “Media Death Row.”
Through hyper-personalised, AI-driven silos, GAI firms have built a multi-billion-dollar industry on a foundation of mass copyright infringement. They treat the life’s work of journalists as raw material—scraped without permission, processed without payment and condemned to death without trial. This is unfair!
Damning data shows that the clock is ticking! In 2025, the global media industry faced a “structural collapse” as Big Tech pivoted from a referral-based web to a consumption-based “buffet.” Digital advertising shift; declining print traffic and AI disruption are the executioners.
The most staggering loss was the evaporation of digital foot traffic. News publishers saw their share of Google Search referrals plummet from 51% in 2023 to just 27% by the end of 2025—a direct result of “zero-click” AI Overviews that satisfy user queries without passing on the click.
While the total global advertising pie expanded to $1.14 trillion, the spoils were increasingly sequestered. Alphabet (Google) alone crossed the $100 billion quarterly revenue threshold in Q3 2025. Meanwhile, premium publishers reported organic traffic declines of up to 25%. The numbers for 2026 are even gloomier.
This year, global search referrals to publishers have collapsed by an additional 33%. Like the indifferent light of a cell block, GAI summaries satisfy queries without a single click. “Zero-click” searches now sit at 69%, leaving publishers to starve in the shadows. This shift has effectively transformed the open web into a training set for GAI, forcing trusted media to survive on “crumbs”—relying on licensing deals and niche subscriptions.
For the mainstream press, the loss was colossal in terms of readership and ad revenue. An estimated $2.3 billion in annual global ad revenue has sadly been diverted from those who report the news to those who merely summarise it. For instance, in the first half of the 2025/2026 cycle alone, the industry saw catastrophic job cuts linked directly to this AI-driven traffic collapse. The Washington Post announced roughly 300 job cuts (about 30% of staff), shuttering its sports desk, and shrinking other departments due to reported losses of $100 million in 2024 and falling subscriptions.
It appears a total eclipse is dangerously on the horizon. GAI “Answer Engines” have transformed from bridges into walls. Reports show that while Google Search used to send a visitor for every 14 times it crawled a site, AI firms are now scraping sites 13 million times (yes, you heard me right), while delivering as few as 650 visits.
Even at that, industry experts still predict an additional 43% decline in search traffic over the next three years. The window for action is closing rapidly. And the hangman’s noose is getting nearer.
This is not just a threat to publishers; it is a suicide pact for the AI industry. If we allow GAI to bankrupt the people who produce original, verified journalism, the AI will eventually have nothing to “eat” but its own digital rubbish and waste. Every layoff in a newsroom represents a “last”: the last investigative report, the last local court reporter, the last check on power, the last editorial board member.
Gladly, some countries are pushing back, loosening the hangman’s noose on their press. Not because they so much love the press, but because they subscribed to the statement of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) that: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”.
From the EU’s AI Act to Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code and South Africa’s compensation deal—the world is waking up. These are not merely regulations; they are emergency interventions designed to stop Big Tech from cannibalising the ecosystem that sustains it and protects the values of freedom and democracy that keep humanity sane and humane.
But on death row, there is a brutal “litigation of hope.” For newsrooms, that hope is the belief that high-quality journalism still matters. We don’t need more “wait and see” approaches; we demand economic justice. Litigation alone is insufficient; the New York Times disclosed spending a colossal $10.8 million in 2024 on GAI-related legal expenses, but that is a drop in the bucket for the “filthy rich” tech and AI firms.
The argument is simple: as the Nigerian government is obligated to protect citizens against fake drugs through NAFDAC, the Tinubu administration is equally obligated to protect Nigeria, its democracy, and citizens’ rights against Big Tech and AI’s insidious practices.
This is not the time to sit on the fence. Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous warning about silence in the face of tyranny rings true here. If we do not speak for the journalists today, there will be no one left to verify the truth tomorrow.
Trusted news media need governments and intellectual property offices worldwide to decisively enforce digital fairness and the digital border. Without urgent intervention—transparency mandates, the right to opt-out of scraping without losing search visibility, and fair compensation—the “Death Row” of journalism will reach its final Tuesday at dawn. When the last trusted newsroom goes dark, GAI will have plenty to say, but nothing true to talk about.
All told, governments should stand for fair and sustainable journalism. Big Tech and GAI should be a tool to support human-led journalism, but not a replacement for it.
Adediran, the CEO of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria (NPAN), writes via olusegunadediran@gmail.com
