Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) pulled legislation to help smaller and conservative news outlets bargain with Big Tech after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) successfully amended the bill in committee to limit negotiations to prices and not content moderation.
The fate of the bill is now unclear.
The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would allow smaller news outlets to negotiate with companies like Google and Meta without running afoul of antitrust laws. The bill was supposed to advance through the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, but Klobuchar, the bill’s author, yanked it after Cruz’s amendment passed.
Klobuchar and Cruz argued over the amendment for a notable period, with the Minnesota senator claiming that the bill had nothing to do with content moderation. Cruz insisted that it was necessary to get support on the floor and to stop “media cartels” from collaborating on censoring content. The committee voted 11-10 in favor of the amendment.
BANNON INDICTED AFTER SURRENDERING TO NEW YORK AUTHORITIES
The bill would empower eligible outlets to form “joint negotiation entities” to negotiate collectively with tech companies over their access to the outlets’ content. It would also require those companies, if they have at least 50 million U.S.-based users or are owned by someone with annual sales of more than $550 billion, to negotiate in good faith with the outlets. It would also offer the eligible outlets an eight-year safe harbor and the ability to withhold content amid joint negotiations if necessary.
“We are glad to see that the Senate Judiciary Committee pulled the JCPA for now, and we applaud the members that made strong statements recognizing its many problems,” said Jennifer Huddleston, the policy counsel for NetChoice, a group representing many large tech platforms.
“By shielding certain U.S. newspapers from antitrust laws and incentivizing them to collude, JCPA would have enabled the use of government power to interfere in decisions about what is and is not legitimate news and diminish competition in the diverse media landscape,” Huddleston added.
Other industry groups noted the select focus of the legislation. “Despite the name, the JCPA does not include provisions that will stimulate competition or thwart media conglomerates from hollowing out journalist jobs,” argued Re:Create Executive Director Joshua Lamel. “Moreover, the JCPA still undermines constitutional rights to free speech and free press and establishes copyright loopholes that will dismantle the free flow of information on the internet.”
Lamel said that “today’s markup confirmed that Big Media lobbyists pulled the wool over Senators’ eyes, hiding how mega-media corporations are the bill’s biggest beneficiaries.”
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While the legislation has bipartisan support, several tech industry groups have argued it would harm journalism. “The JCPA will compound some of the biggest issues in our information landscape and do little to enable the most promising new models to improve it,” argued a coalition of 21 tech industry groups, archivists, and privacy advocates. These issues included allowing outlets promoting false claims to attack companies for content moderation decisions legally and forcing Big Tech companies to pay unnecessarily for reporting.
