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Another Wisconsin congressman is advocating for fairer negotiations between local news outlets and tech giants so that journalists can be paid for their work.
U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Minocqua, last week added his name as a co-sponsor of the Journalism Competition and Protection Act because several news outlets in his northern Wisconsin district could go out of business due to Big Tech’s predatory practices.
“For too long, tech giants like Google and Facebook have killed local news organizations with their monopolistic power,” Tiffany said in a statement to the State Journal. “The Journalism Competition and Protection Act will give hard-working local reporters a level playing field and relief from Big Tech’s anti-competitive practices.”
He is correct. And more members of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation should get behind this important cause to protect independent and professional reporting in their local communities.
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Tiffany, along with Rep. Glenn Grotman, R-Glenbeulah, and 75 other members of Congress support a platform for fairer negotiations on how local news stories are used and monetized by search engines and social media sites.
His supporters include 44 Democrats and 20 Republicans in the House, and seven Republicans and 6 Democrats in the Senate. That’s almost double-edged. And a key Senate committee is expected to approve the proposal soon, advocates say. The Senate Judiciary Committee, with Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, and Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh, must recommend and send the bill to the full Senate.
The Journalism Competition and Protection Act allows local news service providers to bargain collectively with big tech companies for up to four years. The temporary exemption from federal antitrust laws gives local news outlets more leverage to secure advertising revenue and better control how their stories are used by Google, Facebook and a handful of digital intermediaries.
Big tech companies make most of their revenue from attitudes toward news providers, even though local journalists produce most of the content these tech companies get. That is not a free or fair market.
News publishers are gaining a large audience online. With so much unverified and unreliable information on social media and shady online forums, the public is looking for credible information from local sources in their communities.
But many reliable outlets — including small newspapers in Tiffany’s northern Wisconsin district — are struggling to survive because Google and Facebook control what most can see online and how the revenue from all that traffic is divided.
Google and Facebook dominate the digital market and are happy to shape the terms in their favor. But Americans are increasingly suspicious — with good reason — that these companies are unfairly distorting conversations, highlighting sensitive issues, encouraging divisiveness, destroying personal data and undermining our democracy.
The Journalism Competition and Protection Act encourages the tech giants to negotiate in good faith over the value of local journalism to their platforms, as well as how it will be viewed and prioritized. And Big Tech can return more to newsrooms to pay for local news coverage, rather than siphoning off most of the ad revenue.
Market forces — not two companies — must work to ensure that local journalism is properly compensated, hire more reporters, and inform citizens.
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