Facebook Threatens to Pull News Content if Congress Attaches JCPA to Annual Defense Bill
Facebook parent Meta threatened Monday to "consider removing news from our platform altogether" if Congress passes the FY 2023 National Defense Authorization with language from the controversial Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (S-673), part of an outcry from opponents of the measure amid reports that Senate leaders planned to attach JCPA in the annual measure. The Senate Judiciary Committee-cleared S-673 (see 2209220077) would create a limited antitrust exemption to allow news publishers to collectively bargain with tech platforms for the use of their content. The House Judiciary Committee hasn't voted on companion HR-1735. The House Rules Committee postponed plans to vote Monday on a rule setting up floor debate on the measure, to be filed as an amendment to shell bill HR-7776, because the bill wasn’t yet ready.
Meta may pull news content from Facebook "rather than submit to government-mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscriptions,” the company said: “No company should be forced to pay for content users don’t want to see and that’s not a meaningful source of revenue. Put simply: the government creating a cartel-like entity which requires one private company to subsidize other private entities is a terrible precedent for all American businesses.”
More than two dozen S-673 opponents jointly urged Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and ranking GOP leaders not to attach the measure to the NDAA. Broadcasters urged the Senate in November to bring S-673 to the floor before the end of the lame-duck session (see 2211290038). “This bill, despite months of advocacy and multiple revisions, contains far too many contradictions, complexities, and problems to be included in any omnibus or must-pass legislation,” the groups said in a letter to the congressional leaders. “We are well aware that local news (newspapers, in particular) is in crisis,” but S-673 “will compound some of the biggest issues in our information landscape and do little to enable the most promising new models to improve it.”
Historically, “antitrust exemptions have not accomplished beneficial goals, and instead have harmed competition and consumers, entrenched existing power structures, and increased codependence between powerful industry incumbents,” the S-673 opponents said: The bill “will cement and stimulate consolidation in the industry and create new barriers to entry for new and innovative models of truly independent, local journalism.” Signers included the Computer & Communications Industry Association, Fight for the Future, Public Knowledge and the R Street Institute. Schumer’s office didn’t comment.
“Desperate Democrats know that their last chance to pass the JCPA during the lame duck session of Congress is to include it in a must-pass vehicle,” wrote Americans for Tax Reform Federal Affairs Manager Tom Hebert: ‘Republicans should keep JCPA out of NDAA and block any additional attempts to include radical antitrust rewrites in must-pass vehicles during lame duck.” NetChoice planned to begin airing ads on Fox News and other media outlets Tuesday “educating lawmakers about the devastating consequences” of attempts to “ram through” S-673 through “a lame duck Congress without proper oversight.”