CLAIM: Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) claims of the media cartel bill: “our bill gives local news outlets the ability to collectively negotiate for fair compensation with companies like Google and Facebook.”
VERDICT: False. The bill Klobuchar is referring to, the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), contains a loophole that allows big media corporations to exclude smaller, independent competitors, including independent local news outlets.
The JCPA, which Breitbart News has covered extensively, would create an antitrust exemption for media companies, protecting widely distrusted media companies from competition by allowing them to form a legal cartel to collectively bargain with Silicon Valley.
(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
If the bill passes, big media companies would be able to strike deals with Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other tech giants that would prioritize their content to the detriment of podcasters, YouTubers, Substack authors, and other forms of independent media.
A line in the bill allows members of the state-sanctioned cartel to exclude any company that is not “similarly situated” to them from the benefits of their negotiations with the tech giants.
It would also exclude any journalist who does not have “a dedicated professional editorial staff” that publishes news content “least a weekly basis,” effectively excluding independent journalists who run small operations on Substack, YouTube, and other platforms.
Numerous experts across the ideological and political spectrum have warned that the JCPA, far from empowering local news, would damage them by empowering the same national media monopolies that are acquiring them at a rapid pace.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a liberal advocacy organization, has warned that the bill empowers “media near-monopolies” at the very moment when media consolidation is “reaching its zenith.”
“It does not answer the question of why the hedge funds, private equity ghouls, and giant media near-monopolies should get to reap the benefits of this new exemption when they have already benefitted from Big Tech’s ad takeover.”
Prof. Adam Candeub, an expert in communications law, says the bill will “an elite cartel of a few media companies colluding with Big Tech to silence everyone else.”
Award-winning independent journalist Glenn Greenwald has warned that the bill will allow big media corporations to exclude their competitors.
“If you allow the biggest players — the New York Times, Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post — to be at that table and give them an antitrust exemption, you’re essentially creating two consortiums instead of eliminating the one at the root of all of the problems.”
FCC commissioner Nathan Simington has also warned that the bill, far from helping the local news industry, would in fact undermine it.
“One difficult headwind facing local journalists is the consolidation of national journalism,” said Simington in a comment to Breitbart News last year. “If the practical effect of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act is to strengthen national journalism, I am concerned that it will undermine local journalism — both in its independence of voice and its community engagement.
“I worry that negotiations permitted under this bill would be dominated by the interests of the biggest, best-funded national journalism content creators. Without a mechanism to prevent this, the bill will effectively give such creators the ability to negotiate on behalf of an industry that they do not truly represent.”
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.
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