Cruz, Graham, Grassley join Democrats to advance journalism antitrust bill 

The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced a bill Thursday that aims to let news outlets collectively negotiate with dominant tech platforms to be compensated for distributing their content.

The Thursday markup brought together unlikely allies. 

The panel advanced the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) in a 13-7 vote, with Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), the bill’s lead GOP sponsor, and Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) joining most Democrats in advancing the bill. 

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was the only Democrat on the panel to vote against advancing the bill. 

The proposal advanced last session, as well, with bipartisan support, but it was not brought to a floor vote before the end of the session. 

One key concern raised by those opposed to the bill centered on content moderation.

Republicans against the measure argued it would lead companies to censor content with an anti-conservative bias. 

“I’m afraid the bill would give media and Big Tech companies a free pass to censor the views of conservatives,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said.

The bill includes a provision that would prohibit news discrimination by tech companies based on viewpoint of content. But Cotton argued the bill would “still allow media and Big Tech companies plenty of backdoors to collectively censor conservative views and voices.”

On the flip side, Padilla raised concerns that the bill could “compel platforms to carry content and pay for content that they fundamentally disagree with.”

“I worry the bill would be used to disincentivize efforts to moderate content including but not limited to election disinformation,” he said. 

Padilla also said he does not think the bill as written would achieve its goal of protecting local newspapers. 

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a lead sponsor of the bill and chair of the antitrust subcommittee, stressed the urgency in passing this bill and others that aim to rein in the power of tech companies. She said the U.S. is lagging behind other nations leading the way. 

“We know the market is broken here and it is broken all over the world. We’re starting to see country after country step in. It is our country that is the one that hasn’t been moving on tech. It is our country, it appears, in this Congress, that there is always something found,” Klobuchar said. 

“On the left or the right — it really doesn’t matter what. What is the same? What does all this have in common? It helps the platforms, every single time,” she added. 

Graham echoed Klobuchar’s push for action, saying he is for the bill because “enough is enough.” 

“Even when we all agree, [the bills are] going absolutely nowhere,” he said. 

In addition to the strange bedfellows in the Senate, the bill is facing joint opposition from an unlikely collection of outside groups.

Advocacy and civil society groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Knowledge, joined forces with tech industry groups, like Chamber of Progress and the Computer and Communications Industry Association, in a joint letter to the committee voicing opposition to the bill. 

They argue the proposal would lead to more networked disinformation and hate speech online and that it fails to help the local news outlets it aims to benefit. 

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has also pushed back strongly on the bill. The company last year threatened to pull news content from Facebook if the version of the JCPA that advanced last year was added to a defense authorization bill. 

Meta made the same threat recently in California over a similar state bill.