House Antitrust Chairman David Cicilline (D-RI) and the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law concluded their year-long, bipartisan investigation of big tech’s market power by releasing their comprehensive report. The report discusses the online platforms’ anticompetitive actions against news publishers and how that abuse harms publishers’ ability to produce quality journalism for the public. The report and multiple witnesses expressed support for H.R. 2054, the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which would allow news publishers a limited window in which to negotiate collectively with the online platforms for fair compensation. Other recommendations to address anticompetitive practices include structural separations and prohibitions of certain dominant platforms from operating in adjacent lines of business and presumptive prohibition against future mergers and acquisitions by the dominant platforms. Both Google and Amazon have released statements suggesting that company break-ups would be bad for consumers. Read more here.
Members of the News/Media Alliance staff have contributed to this post.
