WASHINGTON, DC – Last night, the News/Media Alliance honored three champions of a free and sustainable press at its 2026 Support Journalism Awards & Chairman’s Dinner, held at the Washington Marriott Georgetown. The evening drew over 250 attendees, a majority of them executives from news organizations across the country, who head to Capitol Hill today to urge lawmakers to pass the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act (H.R. 9915).
This year’s honorees are:
- Floyd Abrams, recipient of the 250 Achievement Award, recognizing a career spent defending the First Amendment and the right of the press to report without government interference, from the Pentagon Papers case to today.
- Representative Laurel Lee (FL-15), recipient of the Support Journalism Champion Award, recognizing her leadership as lead sponsor of the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act.
- Representative Valerie Foushee (NC-4), recipient of the Local News Leader Award, recognizing her commitment to local journalism and her role as lead Democratic cosponsor of the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act.
Introduced in July by Reps. Lee, Foushee, and Gus Bilirakis (FL-12), the bipartisan Stealth Bot Prohibition Act would prohibit “stealth bots” that pose a burden on websites from disguising their identity or posing as human users. Stealth crawlers increasingly scrape news content without permission, burdening publisher websites and undermining the emerging market for licensing journalism to AI companies. The bill would give the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general authority to enforce these requirements.
Following the dinner, attendees are meeting today with members of Congress and their staff as part of the Alliance’s annual Fly-In to build support for the legislation.
Publishers and others who want to support the bill can find talking points, advocacy tools and a social media toolkit at the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act Resource Center.
