This week, Congress has the opportunity to correct the asymmetrical power of Big Tech over local news publishers by taking up the bipartisan Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA).
Since the earliest days of our republic, local newspapers have been critical to keeping the public informed about what’s going on in their communities and holding the powerful accountable.
That hasn’t changed in the digital age, with local news publishers adapting with the times by creating apps, newsletters, podcasts and websites to distribute the work of their newsrooms. But what has changed over the past two decades is the growing power and influence of a handful of technology companies over who gets paid for the hard work of local journalists distributed on their platforms.
According to the California News Publishers Association, “for every dollar made in digital advertising, the platforms take as much as 70% of the revenue, leaving publishers with a scant 30%.”
We think it’s time for local news publishers to be able to negotiate, collectively, over that distribution of digital advertising revenue. Polling by Schoen Cooperman Research has confirmed that majorities of Americans across the political spectrum agree with this common sense idea. That’s what the JCPA would make possible by providing an antitrust exemption for news publishers and broadcasters for the purposes of jointly negotiating fairer terms with Big Tech companies like Google and Meta.
On Monday, Meta, the company behind Facebook, engaged in cynical fear mongering against the law by announcing that passage of the JCPA could prompt the company to halt the distribution of news content on Facebook.
Don’t fall for it. The company said the same thing about a similar law passed in Australia last year which requires social media giants to compensate news publishers for news content distributed on their platforms. The Australian government has since declared the law a “success,” according to Reuters, which, “enabled news businesses to, in particular, employ additional journalists and make other valuable investments to assist their operations.”
Local news publishers in the United States deserve the same opportunity to negotiate for fair compensation from Big Tech companies profiting from their work. The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act should be approved and signed into law.