After Australia, US Publishers May Bargain With Tech Giants

Facebook and Google have struck deals to escape a major part of a new Australian media law that would force them to negotiate fair rates with publishers for carrying news content on their platforms. The new law has created ripples across the globe, but Congress is looking at a different path: reviving a proposal that would radically change how tech companies engage with news publishers. Helping protect news In 2018, Rep. David Cicilline (D.-R.I.), introduced a bill that provided an antitrust exemption for news media companies, allowing them to collectively bargain with tech giants. In the aftermath of Australia's deal, Cicilline has vowed to reintroduce the bill. In the past few months, antitrust scrutiny of Silicon Valley has accelerated. Cicilline’s House antitrust subcommittee has led multiple congressional hearings on the power of Big Tech, including spearheading a 449-page antitrust report on Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. The federal and state government have followed suit, suing Google for dominance in search and digital advertising, and targeting Facebook for maintaining its chokehold on the social media market. The Cicilline bill is a “starting place,” said David Chavern, president and CEO of the News Media Alliance, a news industry trade organization that has lobbied for the bill. Chavern told Adweek he sees lessons in the past, when “content creators lost control of their distribution.” For example, when recording devices disrupted the music industry, music licensing was introduced, and when cable providers eclipsed broadcast television, retransmission fees were set. “We create a critical and expensive kind of content that, if it goes away, civic society is at risk,” he said. "Distribution through these platforms doesn’t return ... sufficient value back.” Temporary stopgap measure The Cicilline bill is a temporary stopgap measure “to stop the complete devastation that we’ve been seeing to the news industry,” according to Sally Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at the progressive nonprofit Open Markets Institute, which has campaigned against tech giants’ large market power. The lawmaker's original proposal involved a 48-month safe harbor where normal antitrust restrictions would not apply to news publishers, giving regulators a chance to explore other anti-monopoly measures, she noted. “Because Facebook and Google have monopoly power over the flow of information in their respective sphere, the news industry and publishers have no ability to deal with their unfair terms,” Hubbard said. “The safe harbor just allows the publishers to band together to have a little more bargaining power to get fairer treatment from the tech platforms under our current monopoly system.” A technological shift While news organizations, especially local media, have struggled with shrinking advertising revenues in recent years, Google and Facebook are not the only problem, according to Alec Stapp, director of technology policy at the nonprofit think tank Progressive Policy Institute. “It’s a technological shift,” he said. “It’s the rise of the internet, not the rise of a few companies that have caused revenues to shift.” “I think it’s a bit bizarre to claim to find a competition problem in the tech industry and say that Facebook and Google are too dominant, therefore the solution is to give a whole other industry—the publishing industry—an antitrust exemption,” Stapp continued. “We want healthy competition, we don’t want companies colluding together to promote their own narrow interests.” Stapp is fearful that tech platforms may ditch news entirely, a move some have already embraced. Facebook recently suspended the sharing of news and news organizations from its platform in Australia until reaching a deal with the government, and Google shut down Google News in Spain, though it has not impacted publishers' overall news traffic as much as Facebook's move. According to Chavern and other publishers, the larger concern is that Facebook and Google may be “picking winners and losers” and favoring large national news organizations over smaller local ones. Ongoing dependence on tech Critics also maintain that current media tech proposals might make news companies even more dependent on Big Tech through checks. “When you exempt agreements on price, it also makes the beneficiaries lax—it almost makes them less competitive,” said Alden Abbott, a senior research fellow at the libertarian Mercatus Center and former general counsel at the Federal Trade Commission. Chavern said this is already happening, and it is imperative for news organizations to find diverse revenue streams. “I worry a little about unpaid dependence versus paid dependence,” he said. If the bill comes to fruition, it would act as a temporary fix to provide immediate help to struggling advertising-based news outlets, providing "short-term relief as we work on addressing the fundamental structural problems to create a sustainable business model for journalism based on advertising,” Hubbard said. “And that should be our ultimate goal: create a sustainable, de-concentrated, ad-supported business model for journalism.” Facebook Restores Access to News in Australia in Deal With Government

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After Australia, US Publishers May Bargain With Tech Giants

A collective bargaining bill with Facebook and Google gains new attention

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