JCPA Is 'Vital' to 'Informed Citizenry,' Says NAB's Smith

Passage of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act is “vital to broadcasters’ mission to create an informed citizenry,” wrote former NAB President Gordon Smith in The Hill Tuesday. “The rapid, often anticompetitive expansion of the dominant Big Tech platforms has upended the advertising marketplace, posing a grave threat to the industry,” Smith said. “Left unchecked, Americans will lose access to the most trusted local news as broadcasters and newspapers face an uncertain and daunting future,” Smith said. The JCPA “drastically favors broadcasters over newspapers and gives the biggest rewards to massive media conglomerates rather than local newspapers,” said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld in a blog post Tuesday. Employee caps on eligible beneficiaries of the law don’t apply to broadcasters, and the language in it could give broadcasters more votes than newspapers, Feld said. The proposed law “is not a government handout, nor would it create a new regulatory regime,” Smith said. “It would simply create a framework for news publishers to negotiate on equal terms with the Big Tech behemoths in the marketplace.”