Courtney Touting Fed Bill Creating 'Safe Harbor' For Local News

VERNON/WASHINGTON, DC — U.S. Rep Joe Courtney (CT-02) on Thursday became one of the earliest co-sponsors of legislation that will allow local news outlets to negotiate collectively with large online platforms, including Facebook and Google.

The bipartisan Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, introduced yesterday U.S. Reps. David Cicilline (RI-01) and Doug Collins (GA-09), creates "a temporary safe harbor for news publishers to band together to negotiate with online platforms to protect Americans’ access to local, trustworthy sources of news online."

Courtney said community news outlets are facing a market that is "increasingly anti-competitive."

He added, "Tech giants like Google and Facebook have centralized control of the vast majority of online content, and local publishers are being squeezed out while their labor is exploited ... The number one reason why people are unwilling to pay for local news is because they can get it for free online. Our bill uses the free market as a solution, providing a path for local news outlets to more fairly negotiate the value of their content with large tech platforms. Community journalism and reliable local news hold a critical place in our democracy, and I’m proud to be among the first supporters of this much-needed legislation."

The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act establishes a 48-month safe harbor for local publishers to band together and coordinate negotiations with dominant online platforms in order to improve the access to and the quality of news online.

The safe harbor is narrowly tailored to ensure that coordination by news publishers is only in the interest of promoting trust and quality journalism, and only allows coordination by news publishers if it (1) directly relates to the quality, accuracy, attribution or branding, or interoperability of news; (2) benefits the entire industry, rather than just a few publishers, and is non-discriminatory to other news publishers; and (3) is directly related to and reasonably necessary for these negotiations, instead of being used for other purposes.

A 2017 Pew Research Center study found that most Americans accessed news through only two platforms – Facebook and Google. These companies control the vast majority of online referrals, and just last year amassed more than $60 billion from online advertising – the majority of all online ad revenue. In contrast, annual revenue for news publishers has plummeted by $31 billion since 2006.