Press gang

19 February 2021 By John Foley Follow @johnsfoley

Some U.S. lawmakers want to let small news outlets collude when dealing with Facebook and Google. The idea of empowering the weak as well as taming the strong has merit. But it won’t help little firms enough to save them, or do much to shift the balance of power.

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Small news organizations could win antitrust exemptions that would let them band together when negotiating with big technology companies, under a plan to be proposed by some U.S. lawmakers, Representative Ken Buck, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel, told Reuters.

The bill would be a new version of earlier proposed legislation spearheaded by Democratic Representative David Cicilline in 2018 and 2019, giving a so-called safe harbor to news outlets for four years. Without that protection, media companies that team up can fall foul of antitrust rules.

Facebook said on Feb. 17 that it would restrict publishers and users in Australia from sharing or seeing local and international news. The social media company disagrees with a government proposal that would effectively make big technology companies pay publishers and broadcasters for content.

Separately, Google struck a three-year deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp to pay to feature news from the company’s Australian newspapers and others from around the world, including the Wall Street Journal and the Sun in Britain, on its fledgling Google News Showcase service.

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