Legislative ‘lifeline’ for news publishers hits wall in Senate

A bill that would enable publishers to get Big Tech platforms such as Google and Facebook to pay for their content is stalling in the Senate over GOP censorship fears.

The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) would let news outlets band together to negotiate fair compensation with Big Tech for content that the multibillion-dollar corporations now use for free.

The bill would protect news publishers from antitrust laws so they could come to an agreement on the terms for distributing the content.

But concerns arose over whether such a deal would also cover the type of content that can run. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) voiced concern about the potential for censorship.

He introduced an amendment stating that the antitrust clause would not apply if any of the parties enter into “any discussion of the content moderation policies, practices, or procedures” of publication.

In other words, if the discussions were to stray from money matters, the bill’s antitrust protections would not hold.

“What this amendment would do is say when the cartels sit down and negotiate, they’d say we’re not going to discuss censorship, we’re going to discuss price,” Cruz was quoted as saying by the Chicago Tribune.

The bipartisan bill had been set for a vote on in the Senate Judiciary Committee until Cruz introduced the amendment. But the legislation was tabled to a future Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

“Since news outlets depend on the antitrust exemption, while the covered platforms do not, the platforms could then raise content moderation at the first opportunity in an attempt to avoid the joint negotiations,” said bill co-sponsor Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), according to the Chicago Tribune.

“I don’t think we can support this bill anymore,” she said. “I think the agreement that we had has been blown up.”

[ Google, Meta could be forced to pay for online news under legislation aimed at helping Daily News and other local publishers ]

The News Media Alliance, a newspaper trade organization based in Washington, D.C., said the bill overall would be a “lifeline to local news.” It called for debate to resume.

“Today’s Senate Judiciary Committee markup showcased the many ways in which Google and Facebook have used and abused news publishers and been allowed to profit from their content,” the group’s President and CEO David Chavern said in a statement.

Huge national publications including The New York Times are not included in the legislation. But thousands of local and regional newspapers with fewer than 1,500 employees are covered. Those include the Chicago Tribune, the Daily News and other papers acquired last year by Alden Global Capital.