France won the World Cup, everyone was talking about Titanic and Cher’s ‘Believe’ was topping the charts. But I spent most of 1998 in a windowless basement, combing through the national newspapers.
It was my first job, and my task was simple: find any mention of my clients, cut them out, stick them in the PR equivalent of a scrapbook and send it to them.
That summer wasn’t just about Deschamps, DiCaprio and divas, though. One of the most prominent stories of the time was the Department of Justice’s legal battle with Microsoft, in which Bill Gates’ behemoth was accused of anti-competitive practices.
Fast-forward to 2025, and the dominant tech company of our age, Meta, is facing similar allegations of antitrust violations with one key difference: it’s hardly being talked about.
In this blog post, I’ll share my theory as to why.
There has been some excellent journalism surrounding Meta’s landmark court case, in which the FTC is seeking to force Meta to sell off Instagram or WhatsApp on anti-competitive grounds. In particular, The New York Times, Quartz and The Verge have provided some excellent coverage.
But it’s nothing to rival the metaphorical confetti of press cuttings that I had to manage in 1998. Microsoft's legal battle dominated the business pages. From Bill Gates’ court performance to the incriminating email evidence, it was a captivating story because the consequences felt so significant for virtually anyone using a computer.
Meta’s user numbers in 2025 dwarf those of Microsoft’s in 1998. Meta has 3.98bn monthly active users, which means almost half of the world’s population uses either Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp every month. 90% of the world’s computers used Windows as their primary operating system in 1998, but less than 5% of the global population actually owned one.
Relatively speaking, Meta’s court case is of far more public interest. So where’s the coverage?
This huge imbalance of attention isn’t explained by a shift in the public interest around stories like these, but rather a shift in the media itself.
A 2020 article by The Press Gazette reported a 66% decline in newspaper sales over the past two decades. Where ad spend used to go to traditional media outlets, now it goes to the likes of Google, Amazon and - you guessed it - Meta. This very week, The Times reported that half of all advertising revenue in the UK went to either Meta or Google.
There simply aren’t enough journalists to give this story the column inches it deserves.
You’ll already see the irony here. In its dominance, Meta has gutted the traditional media that might’ve reported more comprehensively on its legal battle. It has effectively cannibalised its own media coverage, which, based on what we know about the case so far, is no bad thing for Mark Zuckerberg.
Based on a quick Google News search, there have been 92,600 stories published about the Meta lawsuit over the past month.
Taylor Swift has had 3,860,000 - or 41.6x more - over the same time period.
The lesson here isn’t to write more about Taylor Swift. It’s to recognise that business news - even arguably the most important of our time - is struggling to command attention. The days of media as a public service are mostly over: if you want coverage, you need to generate clicks.
Shortlisted for 2x DataComms Awards from Communicate - As you’d expect from a communications agency called “Hard Numbers”, we love awards that recognise excellence in data storytelling. And we’re delighted to be shortlisted for two awards at the DataComms Awards, you can read more here.
Shortlisted for 2x PRCA DARE Awards - We’ve been shortlisted for Medium Consultancy of the Year, and Charlie Martin from our team has been shortlisted for the Rising Star award. You can see more about this here.
MORE AWARDS?! That’s right, shortlisted for "Specialist PR Consultancy of the Year” at the CIPR Excellence Awards, which you can read about here.
Oh, and did we mention that we’re PRMoment’s B2B PR Agency of the Year?!
Measurement presentation for the CIPR - Annnnnnd, as part of our commitment to measurement best practice, our MD Darryl Sparey gave a presentation for the CIPR’s Education and Skills Sector Group on PR measurement best practice, which received an excellent write-up from Tim Ridgway of Surrey County Council, here.
