Tech corporations are endangering newspapers — and our democracy. This bill would help | Opinion
California and the country are facing a crisis of news deserts, places where local newspapers no longer exist. But there is an important action that can be taken to help save the news: States like California (and ideally also Congress) can and should enact laws requiring tech platforms that link news stories to pay the newspapers that produce them.
A recent study by the Medill School of Journalism found that since 2005, the country has lost more than one-fourth of its newspapers and is on track to lose a third by 2025. Between late 2019 and May 2022, more than 360 newspapers closed.
The report concluded that “most of the communities that have lost newspapers do not get a print or digital replacement, leaving 70 million residents — or a fifth of the country’s population — either living in an area with no local news organizations, or one at risk, with only one local news outlet and very limited access to critical news and information that can inform their everyday decisions and sustain grassroots democracy.”
Most newspapers that survive have had to cut their staffing. From 2008 to 2017, total newspaper newsroom staffing almost halved, dropping from 71,000 employees to 39,000.
Many studies have shown that without a strong print or digital news organization corruption increases and voter participation decreases. One study of 11 California cities found that when there are fewer reporters covering an area, fewer people run for mayor and fewer people vote.
Many factors have contributed to this crisis in the news media. An important problem that can be fixed legislatively is how large social media platforms like Google, Facebook and Instagram link to news stories and therein gain advertising revenue, but none of the money goes to the news organizations that did the actual reporting. Tech platform are swallowing profits that would otherwise go to the newspapers that are covering the news, doing the investigations and writing the stories.
There is a bill pending in the California legislature — the California Journalism Preservation Act — that would help solve this problem. Assembly Bill 886, put forward by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, would require Big Tech to pay a fee for news on their platforms, allowing journalism providers to recoup their fair share of revenue for the news stories they produce. The bill would require that these internet and social media platforms pay a “journalism usage fee” to news outlets for content that appeared on their sites.
AB 886 would create an arbitration process with newsrooms to establish a fee that the companies would pay to carry news articles. The experience of other countries shows that this type of legislation works. In 2021, Australia passed a law that requires social media companies to share a portion of the profits they make from news content with news companies. The law generated almost $150 million in revenue in its first year. Canada also adopted a similar law last year.
The California Journalism Preservation Act passed the California Assembly last year with strong bipartisan support and it is scheduled to be considered soon by the Senate Judiciary Committee. It should be approved by the Senate and signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
In response, however, tech giants Google and Meta have threatened that they won’t carry news stories at all if they have to pay for them. Facebook did this in Canada after that country adopted a similar law. This threat shows the moral bankruptcy of these companies — wanting to keep all of the profits after using the work of others. Moreover, the threat, if carried out, would expose these companies to serious risk of antitrust liability. As Chuck Champion, president of the California News Publishers Association, explained, Google is leveraging its monopoly power “to brazenly undermine our democracy.”
Basic fairness says that the internet and social media companies should have to share the revenues they gain from using the work of others. But much more than fairness is at stake. Internet and social media companies are endangering newspapers — and therefore democracy — by providing the content without sharing the profits.
When news organizations vanish, there is no one to go to the city council meetings or do the investigative reporting to uncover corruption or report on local elections. Google, Facebook and Instagram do not have newsrooms to do so and they are not going to create them.
If enacted, the California Journalism Preservation Act can be a model for other states. It is a crucial stop toward saving our democracy.