Journalism is so fundamental to the workings of a democracy that the founders made freedom of the press first in the Bill of Rights. But this industry, so vital to an educated citizenry, is being financially undermined by two monoliths that have taken the content generated by newspapers, TV, radio and others and used it to reap massive profits while refusing to provide any compensation.
Nothing about that is fair, and the repercussions go far beyond the fate of any single newspaper or TV station. Content costs money to produce. Yet two of the biggest consumers and distributors of that news, Facebook and Google, pay nothing to populate their feeds with a steady stream of news from outlets worldwide. Meanwhile, those news outlets are dying at a rapid rate.
And as long as media outlets are left to fend for themselves, there will be little they can do. These digital giants have shown little compunction about just how far they are willing to go. France, in 2021, hit Google with a $593 million fine for its failure to negotiate in good faith with media companies over use of their content, which falls under European Union copyright rules.
When Australia's News Media Bargaining Code became law, with its insistence on fair compensation, Facebook made good on its threat to restrict publishers and people in that country from sharing or viewing news content. That law was an effort to address the vast imbalance of power between the Australian news media and two of the world's largest digital platforms.
"That showed us what we were in for," Danielle Coffey, executive vice president and general counsel for the News Media Alliance, told an editorial writer. "We are not dealing with willing participants."
That is why the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), a bipartisan effort spearheaded by Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, is so vital. The act would grant a four-year exemption to antitrust legislation, giving U.S. media outlets, from the largest to the smallest, time and the ability to negotiate as a single entity with the tech platforms that have been cannibalizing them.
Klobuchar, who calls herself the "proud daughter of a newspaper man," is also an expert on antitrust laws and recently wrote "Antitrust, Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age." The exemption, she told an editorial writer, is needed to level the playing field against the digital giants.
"We've lost 2,200 local newspapers across the country," she said, including dozens in Minnesota. Why? Not readership, which remains as strong or stronger than ever for many outlets. "It's revenue," Klobuchar said. "It's just like following breadcrumbs to the problem." News revenue plummeted from $37 billion in 2008 to $9 billion in 2020, she said. Meanwhile, "Google and Facebook have become advertising titans, with a combined worth of $2.4 trillion."
