On October 27, Senator Maria Cantrell (D-WA), Ranking Member of the Senate Commerce Committee, released a report on threats to local news in today’s digital landscape. It explains how Google and Facebook have created a crisis for local news, whose revenues have been swiftly decreasing because of the platforms’ abuse of their dominant positions in the market. This report cites to the Alliance’s White Paper for examples of such abuse at the expense of news publishers. The report also contains multiple recommendations for addressing this threat to the free press, including giving publishers the ability to collectively negotiate for better terms with the tech platforms. This bargaining power would be made possible by passing S. 1700, the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. Read more here.
Members of the News/Media Alliance staff have contributed to this post.
