FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Arlington, VA – Today the Illinois Senate Executive Committee, the Illinois Senate’s highest committee, will hold a hearing at 1:30 p.m. CT on the Illinois Journalism Preservation Act (SB 3591), which would require Big Tech platforms such as Meta and Google to pay news publishers a “journalism usage fee” to use local news content. Currently, creators of quality journalism are not adequately compensated for the use of their content – which takes a tremendous investment to produce – leading to layoffs of journalists and, in the worst cases, closure of news outlets completely.
The bill was introduced last month by Illinois Senator Steve Stadelman (D-Rockford). Senator Stadelman was the Chair of the Illinois Local Journalism Task Force, which recently recommended legislation to counter the decline in sources of local journalism observed in the state.
News/Media Alliance President & CEO, Danielle Coffey, will deliver virtual testimony during the hearing. “The dominant tech platforms share our publishers’ content, keeping our readers on their platforms and showing them ads, while generating tremendous revenue off of our content with no return to news publications,” Coffey said. “They take up to 70% of each advertising dollar, resulting in a lack of revenue that is sorely needed to invest in newsrooms and hire reporters.”
The Illinois bill is similar to the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA, AB 886), which was introduced by California Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) last year and passed out of the Assembly with an overwhelming, bipartisan vote of 55-6. The CJPA is expected to be brought up for a vote in the California Senate this year.
As with the CJPA, the Illinois JPA would also promote the hiring of more journalists, requiring news publishers to invest 70 percent of the profits from the usage fee into journalism jobs.
Several countries around the world have passed journalism compensation legislation, demonstrating widespread recognition of the importance of quality journalism and the need for fair compensation from the tech platforms. The Indonesian government recently passed a law requiring Alphabet (which owns Google) and Meta (which owns Facebook Instagram and WhatsApp) to compensate local news outlets for use of their content. The Canadian government in June 2023 passed the Online News Act and is now implementing the law requiring Big Tech platforms to compensate news publishers for use of publisher content on their platforms. Prior to that, in 2021, Australia passed the News Media Bargaining Code, which similarly requires Big Tech to compensate news publishers, and which inspired the Canadian law. In Australia, the Code has led to deals with publishers, including small outlets, worth more than the equivalent of $140 million in revenue and has resulted in the creation of journalism jobs.
Coffey concluded, “This broken marketplace must be addressed through government action; without it, Illinois and the rest of the country will have a very bleak future.”
The federal bill, the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (JCPA), was reintroduced in the 118th Congress (S. 1094) and successfully passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee last summer. In a poll of 1,000 U.S. adults conducted by Schoen Cooperman Research for the News/Media Alliance, 70 percent of Americans said they support Congress passing the JCPA.
For more information on the federal JCPA, visit www.JCPABill.com.
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Media contact:
Lindsey Loving
Director, Communications
lindsey@newsmediaalliance.org
The News/Media Alliance is a nonprofit organization representing more than 2,200 news and magazine media organizations and their multiplatform businesses in the United States and globally. Alliance members include print and digital publishers of original journalism. Headquartered just outside Washington, D.C., the association focuses on ensuring the future of journalism through communication, research, advocacy, and innovation. Information about the News/Media Alliance can be found at www.newsmediaalliance.org.
Members of the News/Media Alliance staff have contributed to this post.
