Supporters of the JCPA (Journalism Competition and Preservation Act), a bill that would enable corporate media companies to form a cartel to collude with Big Tech firms like Facebook and Google, are making a last-ditch effort to pass the legislation before Republicans take control of the House next year, including the undemocratic possibility of attaching the JCPA to a so-called “must pass” bill like defense spending.
Crucially, the latest iteration of the JCPA set to be presented in the House of Representatives includes a big loophole that would allow the corporate legacy media cartel to conspire with tech firms on censoring their competitors, in addition to the financial handouts from Big Tech firms to Big Media companies that supporters of the bill mistakenly believe are its main selling point.
The prospect of the media collaborating with Big Tech on censorship nearly killed the measure in the Senate, only to be saved at the last minute by an amendment proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). The amendment prohibited official censorship talks, but it still left the door open for conservative media to be excluded.
The revised House version of the measure weakens even that little compromise, allowing the media cartel to negotiate not just the pricing of cartel members’ content, but also the “terms and conditions” under which it is presented.
“Terms and conditions” could include just about anything, such as prioritizing content from cartel members over sources the cartel see as “low-quality,” “unreliable,” “misinformation,” or any of the other viewpoint-neutral excuses that are mostly used to censor and exclude independent media.
According to Politico’s Morning Tech, the JCPA’s backers are betting everything on a last-ditch attempt to pass the measure during the lame duck session, with the probability of passing defined as “low but not implausible.”
If the JCPA is to succeed, Politico thinks that lawmakers may have to take the contentious step of adding it in a “must-pass” package, such as defense budget, therefore bypassing a meaningful floor debate on the bill’s merits.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), the measure’s Republican co-sponsor in the Senate, told Politico that he anticipated the bill would get “a little more floor time than some people expect.” Politico expressed skepticism, citing the difficulties of securing floor time in a lame-duck session.
In addition to the usual challenges, the new House measure highlights the JCPA’s central problem: it strengthens and enriches the world’s richest and most powerful media firms.
The measure also enables any news organization to join a new cartel within 60 days of its inception, implying that national corporations with several channels may control any new cartel by flooding it with members. Firms like Hearst, Axel Springer SE, Gannett, and Newscorp would dominate decision-making in the cartels, while tiny companies that do not possess several news channels would have little power.
