Senate Judiciary Committee Advances Journalism Bill To Bolster Newspapers, TV Stations Despite Facebook Threat

deadline.com:

The Senate Judiciary Committee revived the prospects for a long-proposed bill that would bolster print and broadcast news outlets in their negotiations with tech giants.

The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday in a 14-7 vote. The bill would create a “safe harbor” from antitrust laws for a period of eight years for newspapers, broadcast stations and digital journalism outlets, giving them more market power in the face of competition for advertising from Google and Facebook.

Lawmakers who champion the legislation, led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), say that it is needed in the face of the decline of local journalism, which has seen the scaling back of newsroom coverage and severe cuts in staffing.

But past attempts to pass the bill into law have stalled, most recently in December, when Facebook threatened “to consider removing news from our platform altogether” rather than “submit to government mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscriptions.”  A spokesperson for Meta, the parent company of Facebook, referred to the company’s past statements on the legislation.