A bill designed to give an advantage to local and conservative news outlets in negotiating with Big Tech advanced from committee Thursday and is expected to be considered on the Senate floor soon.
The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, advanced by the Senate Judiciary Committee, would allow smaller news outlets to band together to negotiate with companies such as Google and Meta without violating antitrust laws. The committee voted 15-7 in favor, with several Republicans voicing opposition to the bill.
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The bill had been brought forward for markup by the committee on Sept. 8 but was pulled by its sponsor Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) over conflicts with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). The two agreed to include an amendment regarding content moderation. No negotiations “may address whether or how the covered platform or any such eligible digital journalism provider displays, ranks, distributes, suppresses, promotes, throttles, labels, filters, or curates the content,” according to a copy of the amendment acquired by Politico.
“Big Tech exercises a concentration of power that I think is unknown in the history of mankind,” Cruz said. “And that concentration of power is regularly used to trample on the little guy.”
Tech industry groups slammed the decision to move the legislation forward. “We’re disappointed to see the Senate Judiciary Committee advance JCPA. Exempting newspapers from antitrust laws will incentivize them to collude in order to control legitimate news and diminish competition,” said Jennifer Huddleston, policy counsel for NetChoice, in a statement. “In an effort to prop-up traditional media, Congress forgets that Americans have more sources of news and views than ever before — because of the internet. Traditional media is increasingly woke and progressive, so we’re disappointed to see Republicans support this bill.”
Journalism coalitions praised the completed markup. “We applaud Senators Klobuchar, Kennedy, Durbin, and Grassley for their support of the JCPA and their dedication to sustaining quality journalism. Today’s markup and vote was a major step towards getting small and local news publishers the fair compensation they deserve for their content,” said News/Media Alliance President & CEO David Chavern.
The bill would empower eligible outlets to form “joint negotiation entities” to negotiate collectively with tech companies over access to the outlets’ content. It would also require tech 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 and would offer the eligible outlets an eight-year safe harbor and the ability to withhold content amid joint negotiations if necessary.
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While the legislation has bipartisan support, several tech industry groups have argued it would harm the journalism industry altogether. “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 include allowing outlets promoting false claims to attack companies for content moderation decisions legally and forcing Big Tech companies to pay unnecessarily for reporting.
