Washington, D.C. — In a letter released today, a coalition of 8 national and local advocacy groups urged the Biden Administration to lend its full support to the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. The legislation, which would empower news outlets to negotiate fair compensation with Big Tech monopolies, advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by a vote of 15-7 in September. It is now awaiting a full floor vote in the Senate.

“The JCPA will give publishers and other journalism providers the bargaining power to demand fair compensation for their invaluable reporting after years of abuse from Big Tech.” said Erik Peinert, Research Manager and Editor at the American Economic Liberties Project. “We urge the White House to fully support this landmark, bipartisan legislation, which is a key step to restoring America’s news landscape and strengthening our democracy.”

“Few things are more important than having a citizenry that is informed by reliable, trusted local journalists who keep an eye on what public officials are doing in their name. The JCPA will provide local newsrooms an opportunity to provide that valuable service,” said Dan Shelley, President & CEO of Radio Television Digital News Association.

“The JCPA will help correct the imbalance in power between those who create the news and the internet platforms that aggregate the news and profit from it. By aggregating news content from all over, Facebook and Google have been able to siphon off most of the ad revenue targeting news consumers,” said Mary Rasenberger, CEO of The Authors Guild. “The JCPA will allow news producers to leverage their collective resources to negotiate fair shares of those ad revenues, which is  something an individual publication or news company has no ability to do alone against the internet behemoths. It should allow some of the ad revenue made from news content be reinvested in the creation of news instead of simply continuing to line the deep pockets of these behemoths. Similar laws in other countries have proven successful in bolstering news producers against Facebook and Google’s duopoly, and we are hopeful that the Biden administration’s support in moving the JCPA across the finish line.”

The JCPA rebalances the unequal relationship between tech platforms and news organizations by creating a time-limited, 8-year “safe harbor” exemption to our antitrust laws, allowing smaller publishers and news organizations to coordinate together to bargain with tech platforms without running afoul of the law. An amendment added today bars newspapers and platforms from negotiating over content moderation terms.

The JCPA also has provisions that ensure the stability and fairness of the negotiation process itself. Tech platforms and news media providers are held to the same standards: they must both make reasonable, good-faith proposals that must be responded to in a timely manner to prevent stalling. A neutral arbitration board is designated to resolve any standstills in the process and is tasked with providing a fair and final judgement if news organizations and tech platforms can’t come to an agreement. To protect the integrity of the process, the JCPA also explicitly protects journalism providers from any form of retaliation by tech platforms.

The letter to the White House was signed by the American Economic Liberties Project, Alliance for Audited Media, Authors Guild, Main Street Alliance, National Press Photographers Association, News Media Alliance, Radio Television Digital News Association, and Revolving Door Project.

Read the full letter to the White House here.

To learn more, read “Should Congress save newspapers from Google,” in Fast Company and “Minority-Owned Media and the Digital Duopoly.”

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.