On January 29, the House Judiciary Committee held its first hearing under the new Democratic leadership on H.R. 1, the “For the People Act of 2019.” The Act, addressing issues such as automatic voter registration, big money in politics, and ethics rules for public servants, also includes language replicating the “Honest Ads Act.” This subsection would require online platforms to maintain and make available for public inspection records of qualified political advertisements published on the platform. The Act does not include an exemption for news publishers, thereby imposing the same political record requirements on news publishers of a certain size who publish political ads. While the issue did not come up during the hearing, the Alliance will work diligently to either include an unequivocal exemption for news publishers or to revise the language so that the Act’s requirements do not impose undue burdens on news publishers. Read more about the bill here.
Members of the News/Media Alliance staff have contributed to this post.