A Local Newspaper Industrial Policy?
CATODec 06, 2022
On Monday, Facebook's parent company Meta threatened to remove news content from the social media platform in the US if a bill, known as the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), is passed.
The bill aims to make it easier for news organizations to bargain collectively against tech giants for larger fees to use their content.
The JCPA is mistakenly predicated on the belief that tech companies are destroying independent journalism and local media, which actually benefit from distributing on large social media platforms. Under the guise of being a neutral mechanism for genuine negotiation, the bill is nothing more than an extension to the war on Big Tech, allowing politicians to redistribute wealth as they see fit.
Local journalism is a cornerstone of democracy, yet it's facing an existential crisis due to the power of Big Tech platforms. It's fundamentally unfair that tech giants profit from the hard work of independent journalists without fairly compensating them. The JCPA will bring about much-needed change and keep small and local publishers afloat.
There's a 23% chance that Meta will report 1 billion active users by the end of 2031, according to the Metaculus prediction community.