Big Tech now has considerable control over much of the news content
This editorial is the opinion of Morgan Hill Life
The United Nations’ World Press Freedom Day is annually celebrated May 3. Let’s remember that the free press isn’t free. It costs money to create and distribute news content.
Newspapers like Morgan Hill Life play a vital role in sustaining the freedoms and rights of Americans. Reporters, however, need to be paid to research, write and edit a stream of stories. Thousands of dollars are also spent to print each issue and distribute copies to readers. That money comes from selling advertising. But as Big Tech and social media make billions in advertising on their online platforms, ad revenue for newspapers is drying up. That’s dangerous for democracy.
The California State Assembly will consider a bill that requires digital advertising monopolies to pay for content they siphon from local news outlets. Called the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), AB 886 will require Internet-based companies like Google and Facebook to pay publishers a “journalism usage fee” to use local news content and sell advertising alongside it.
AB 886 also requires publishers of newspapers to invest 70 percent of the profits from the fee to cultivate journalism jobs. This will help preserve local news providers by requiring investment in hiring and training reporters and editors.
What Big Tech is doing is not necessarily illegal, but it’s definitely not fair to the content creators. In a sense, it’s a form of legal theft of the work of journalists by reframing the content they produce to bypass the newspapers’ direct readers and sell ads on their platforms based on news content. This ad hijacking hurts the American republic.
Newspapers must sell ads to stay in business. They create the content voters need to make decisions at election time. They also serve as the watchdogs of democracy, doing the challenging work of investigating elected officials or corporate leaders. Without reporters, our political and economic structure would quickly fall into a state of corruption as people abuse the system.
AB 886 is vital to preserving our free press and our freedoms. The bill has garnered the support of the 800-member California News Publishers Association and the News/Media Alliance. Both organizations are advocates for quality journalism, free press and fair compensation for locally produced news.
Big Tech now has considerable control over much of the news content that shapes the social will and the political policies that determine the course of American democracy. As the de facto gatekeeper of journalism, these companies (many in Silicon Valley) use their dominance to set the rules for how news content is displayed, prioritized, and monetized. As the source of journalism, newspapers deserve payment for the fair market value of content they generate daily.
Communities without a trusted source of local journalism suffer declining civic engagement and lower voter turnout. Consequences that impact citizens’ quality of life include higher taxes and increased public corruption among officials. We hope that our readers will take a moment to encourage their legislators to vote for AB 866 and fight for the free press by ensuring quality local journalism is preserved throughout California.
More readers receive their news online through Big Tech platforms. That means community news outlets have been downsizing and closing down their businesses because of an alarming loss of ad revenue. By producing a more stable news ecosystem, especially in smaller and ethnic communities, AB 886 will help revitalize the news industry and preserve our free press.
State Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) authored AB 886, which legislators will consider this session. No doubt, Big Tech will spend millions on lobbying efforts to prevent its passage. Billions of dollars of revenue will be at stake for them.
“The CJPA provides a lifeline for news outlets — large, small, and ethnic — by directing a portion of the ad dollars back to the print, digital, and broadcast media that bear the entire cost of gathering and reporting local news while Big Tech bears none,” Wicks said in a press release. “These dominant digital ad companies are enriching their own platforms with local news content without adequately compensating the originators. It’s time they start paying market value for the journalism they are aggregating at no cost from local media.”
Let’s do our civic duty and take small but important steps to defend democracy by sustaining a free press. Journalism is essential for the functioning of a democratic society. Please take a moment to call or email Assemblymember Gail Pellerin who represents Morgan Hill (and who is a former journalist) and ask her to vote for AB 886 — and encourage her fellow legislators to do the same.
