1,000 U.S. News Websites Inaccessible in Europe since GDPR Introduction

A multitude of U.S. news websites have been unavailable in Europe since GDPR was introduced last May as they remain non compliant with the new legislation.

EU-based readers have been prevented from reading the content on these websites, much to the annoyance of many American tourists and those traveling for business.

The news, which was first made public by the BBC, that news websites – including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Daily News, the St. Louis Dispatch, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel – owned by media companies like Tronc and Lee Enterprises are now completely inaccessible within the European Union.

The General Data Protection Regulation was introduced to give the EU’s 500 million citizens greater power over how their private information is used. It was passed in April 2016 and a two-year transitional period came to an end on May 25 this year which the legislation became enforceable.

In order to get ready for this, a large number of US firms made preparations for the introduction of the new legislation and sought the consent of EU visitors for consent to gather their data.

Sarah Toporoff, a reporter for the Global Editors Network in Paris,  criticized the lack of preparations of these blocked outlets. She stated: “It is naive and wholly irresponsible to think that U.S. news holds no relevance beyond U.S. borders. U.S. brands should be better at knowledge sharing with their European counterparts and learn how to serve audiences within the GDPR’s parameters. Not to do so is quite undemocratic.”

NPR, the National Public Radio of the United States of America began displaying their consent tool to comply with GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulation. The group are offering a different method to users that decline cookies. These visitors are brought to to a plain text website.

EU-based readers of Los Angeles Times website were greeted with a message that read “Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism”. The Arizona Daily Sun published a similar message saying “We recognise you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore cannot grant you access at this time”.