Big media push to change Antitrust law...
Lawmakers Look to Even Playing Field Between News Media,
Tech Titans
Measure to allow news publishers to negotiate together
with platform giants to be introduced Wednesday in House
By Keach Hagey Updated April 3, 2019 3:29 p.m. ET
Legislation that would allow news publishers to team up
on negotiations with tech giants such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook
Inc. didn’t advance very far in the last Congress.
Now, its backers are hoping the latest version, which is
expected to be introduced Wednesday, will gain momentum in a
Democratic-controlled House and draw bipartisan support.
The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act is
sponsored by Rep. David Cicilline (D., R.I.), chairman of the House antitrust
subcommittee, and Rep. Doug Collins (R., Ga.).
News publishers have struggled to make money on digital
ads, partly because of the dominance of Facebook and Google. Antitrust law bars
the news companies from working together in negotiations with the tech
platforms.
The bill would give publishers a 48-month safe harbor
from those rules, during which they would be free to work together to push
their case on issues from revenue splits to data-sharing to content-licensing.
Mr. Cicilline said the urgency for such a measure was
increasing.
“Local media and local publishers are really on life
support,” he said, pointing to news-industry data showing that publishers have
lost more than $30 billion in ad revenue since 2006 while Facebook and Google
made more than $60 billion in ad revenue just last year alone.
“You can see that because of their dominance in the
marketplace, they are generating most of the revenue.”
People familiar with Facebook’s thinking say that an
antitrust exemption for publishers would likely harm consumers and fail to help
the solve the business model problems that it is intending to help fix. A
spokesman from Google declined to comment.
A spokeswoman for the Computer and Communications
Industry Association, a tech-industry advocacy group, said the association was
waiting until the bill is introduced to comment.
The legislation would have to clear many hurdles on
Capitol Hill before becoming law; there is now no companion bill in the Senate.
Mr. Cicilline said he and Mr. Collins intend to hold hearings about the plight
of news publishers.
Some Senate Republicans have indicated support for
measures pushing back on the tech giants. Last month, Texas Republican Sen. Ted
Cruz retweeted a complaint from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) that Facebook
had too much power over speech, saying, “She’s right.”
In January, Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said he
would be open to working with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) to
investigate the power of big tech companies.
Mr. Collins, the ranking Republican on the House
Judiciary Committee, said rural communities had been particularly hard-hit by
challenges to news publishers’ business model. He emphasized that his goal
wasn’t “propping up a failed business model,” but rather providing “a level
playing field so they can negotiate with these much larger essentially new
companies that are causing an advertising drain.”
David Chavern, the president of the News Media Alliance,
the publishers advocacy group, said the bill could hold bipartisan appeal
because it is “actually a fairly low-touch way” of striking back at the tech
companies, in contrast to proposals from figures such as Ms. Warren, a
Democratic presidential candidate, who advocate breaking up the tech companies
altogether.
Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, is a
member of the NMA.
Mr. Collins said he didn’t support breaking up the tech
companies, adding, “Simply being big is not bad.”
Several publishers threw their support behind the bill.
“I do think that no single news company has the scale to negotiate with most of
the platforms,” said Neil Patel, publisher of The Daily Caller website, adding
that the bill would “allow for business model innovation between publishers and
platforms, which is something that’s been missing.”
Josh Tyrangiel, a Vice Media executive who has held
senior posts at Bloomberg and Time magazine, said he had watched the power in
the industry steadily drift toward the platforms. “If we don’t start being
serious, there won’t be small publishers left,” he said.
Grant Moise, the publisher of the Dallas Morning News,
said metro papers like his were among the hardest hit by the financial
challenges, in part because the platforms’ control of user data has made it
harder for publishers to sell ads and sign up digital subscribers.
“They have the data,” he said. “When readers are coming
to us through the platforms, our inability to directly market to them makes it
extremely challenging to the business.”
Comments
Post a Comment