Antitrust panel examines bill to give news publishers more negotiating power against Big Tech

A Senate antitrust panel reviewed a bipartisan proposal intending to give news publishers more leverage to negotiate with large tech platforms.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat who leads the antitrust panel, co-sponsored the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act to help news outlets being squeezed out by Big Tech. 

The bill, which has four Republican and four Democratic co-sponsors, would allow news publishers to collectively negotiate against large tech companies like Google and Facebook that dominate advertising and distribution in the news industry. 

“These big tech companies are not friends to journalism — they are raking in ad dollars while taking news content, feeding it to their users, and refusing to offer fair compensation,” Ms. Klobuchar said at Wednesday’s hearing. “And they’re making money on consumer’s backs by using the content produced by news outlets to suck up as much data about each reader as they can.”

The issue is personal for Ms. Klobuchar, whose father was a reporter and columnist in the Twin Cities. 

The bill was introduced in the Senate nearly a year ago and has taken a backseat to other legislation to crack down on tech via antitrust laws, including aiming at Apple and Google’s app stores and by seeking to thwart large tech companies’ preferencing their products online. 

Critics of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act say that the proposal does not achieve its desired outcome. Sen. Mike Lee, Utah Republican, said the legislation would allow competitors to collude against their common Big Tech business partners. 

Mr. Lee said he was concerned about giving a “cartel formation hall pass to an industry that’s been ravaged by a number of other problems.”

“I know publishers, including some of our witnesses today, believe that they would benefit but legislation like the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would do far more to help the New York Times and far more to help the Washington Post than it would be a benefit for local journalism in Salt Lake City or Minneapolis,” Mr. Lee said. “The only way to fix this is by encouraging competition and allowing it and promoting it, not eliminating it, and certainly not giving people a hall pass to engage in contact that would challenge, threaten, and undermine it.”

Mr. Lee’s opposition to the legislation echoed complaints last year by Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, against the House version of the bill. Mr. Jordan said the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would have allowed Big Tech and Big Media to collude. The bill subsequently stalled. 

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel has prioritized other legislation looking to crack down on tech. The Judiciary Committee has scheduled a review of two other proposals for Thursday: one focused on lessening the power of Apple and Google’s app stores and another to rewrite legal liability protections for tech platforms. 

The News Media Alliance, a coalition of news publishers including the Washington Times, has lobbied in support of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act and a News Media Alliance board member participated in Wednesday’s hearing.