August 24, 2022
U.S. lawmakers have unveiled a revised version of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, designed to make it easier for news organizations to negotiate with gatekeeper platforms such as Google and Facebook.
The bipartisan group behind the bill includes Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Republican Sen. John Kennedy, both members of the Judiciary Committee, and House Judiciary Committee members David Cicilline, a Democrat, and Ken Buck, a Republican.
The revised law will cover news publishers with fewer than 1,500 full-time employees and non-network news broadcasters. The bill will therefore empower them to work together to get better deals from Facebook, Google and other major platforms.
An earlier version of the bill, introduced in 2021, was strongly opposed in 2021 by two technology industry trade groups that host some of the largest technology companies, including Facebook and Alphabet’s Google. Version 2021 of the bill would have applied the rule to any print, broadcast or digital news organization with a dedicated editorial staff that publishes at least weekly.
The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.
