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The Congressman Fighting Facebook and Google: A Q&A With R.I.'s David Cicilline

This article is more than 6 years old.

The news industry is in an existential crisis brought on by the rise of Google and Facebook, one member of Congress believes, and he’s proposing an antitrust exemption to allow content providers to collaborate in negotiations with internet social and search giants.

David Cicilline, (D-RI), and like-minded industry associations such as the News Media Alliance—which represents nearly 2,000 small newspapers—are fighting back. On March 7, Cicilline introduced the “Journalism Competition and Preservation Act,” intended to provide what he calls a “limited safe harbor” for news organizations to cooperate in negotiating with the social platforms. Specifically, Cicilline’s bill would, with some limitations, establish a 48-month antitrust exemption window for news organizations to cooperate in negotiating new terms with the social platforms.

Provided by staff.

Google and Facebook, along with a few others, such as Twitter and Apple News, have become the dominant channels for news distribution. They also attract an overwhelmingly dominant share of digital advertising revenue. They are, some would argue, choking the life out of the news industry. They’re subsuming news organizations’ branding efforts, hoarding audiences, gobbling up every available ad dollar, and capriciously shifting algorithms to suit their own business models. And they’re doing all of this while relying on the content produced by news organizations as a critical source of engagement on their own platforms.

Forbes.com caught up with Cicilline this week to talk about his bill. Following is an edited transcript of the conversation.

Forbes.com: Thanks for taking a few minutes today, Congressman Cicilline. Let’s start with this. Define the problem.

Cicilline: Just about 70 percent of Americans access their news through two companies, Google and Facebook. You can see the dominance of these platforms. The ability of smaller companies to negotiate with them just doesn’t exist. The market is not working properly.

Q: How is that necessarily bad?

A: High-quality content creators are at a major disadvantage. The consequences in this space—news—are obviously significant in many ways. Journalism is a central part of the foundation of our democracy. We’re suffering as a community, as a country, and as a democracy. This bill is really designed to create a modest response—to have a more level playing field.

Q: How would the market work if your bill becomes law?

A: We have confidence that if there’s a level playing field, that there can be agreement between these parties. The bill creates a safe harbor. It allows publishers and news providers to basically collude. Larger publications are in a position to negotiate directly, and they probably do. The smaller companies don’t have sufficient market power to do their own negotiations.

Q: Who would act as the representative for media companies in negotiations?

A: Publishers and smaller newspapers would engage in an existing organization, or someone else acting on their behalf. They would go to the two platforms and set terms that ensure the survival of news businesses. The News Media Alliance would be in a perfect position to engage in these kinds of negotiations.

Q: Restoring trust is a big part of your bill. But most media brands don’t have credibility issues. The platforms do. How would your bill address that?

A: Ultimately people need to have confidence that what they’re reading is trustworthy and accurate. We want to be sure that the way information is branded and attributed [in search and on social media] reflects how news sources have invested in their reputations, status, and standing.

Q: Isn’t this really about media consumption? People have come to rely on Apple News, Twitter and Facebook.

A: People are going to continue to consume news as they do. I don’t know that that’s going to change. Content providers ought to have some control over the way their content is presented, including attribution and branding. Right now, the large platforms basically just decide.

Q: If your bill is successful, what’s the formula for who’d get what?

A: The content providers will be in the best position to understand their business models. The platforms need the content, and the content providers needs access to the platforms. They probably wouldn’t say it, but the platforms know they need content from publishers. The existing business model is not sustainable.

Q: Is there a precedent or model you’d look to?

A: At the very least, if you allow the parties on the one side to collaborate, it might be like the music industry, where there’s a way for artists to be compensated properly.

Q: Addressing fake news, branding and trust still doesn’t address the advertising side, where the platforms have devastated the news industry.

A: The bill allows news sources to band together to negotiate with platforms. Coordination as it relates to price is not in the bill, except in the sense that compensation for the product is necessary to quality, reliability and branding. But you’re seeing an increasing number of these small newspapers and publishers aren’t able to survive. You can’t build a business model under the current system.

Q: A news-industry person quoted in your release says, “We value those platforms to extend our reach.” As long as people are accepting crumbs from these platforms, they’re only encouraging use of the platforms—and hurting themselves. Do you agree?

A: This is a temporary safe harbor. The technology changes so rapidly, it’s a modest way to create some fairness in the system as it exists now. It’s hard to know long term how this all plays out, but we know right now that we have a very real issue where traditional and online news organizations are finding it very difficult to survive.

Q: Can you really legislate the future?

A: You have a responsibility to confront the challenges you see today. There are exciting things we see from these two companies, and I recognize that. And we have the ability to respond to some of the consequences of that rapid growth. You can’t solve the problem for the future, but we have a very specific challenge with a market imbalance, and we can address this challenge in this moment.

Q: What’s the likely disposition of your bill?

A: I’m working right now to try to persuade some of my Republican colleagues. We’ve formed an antitrust caucus in the House. There’s a new way of thinking in the House right now. Building a coalition to support this bill is a work in progress. Preserving competition in the marketplace ought to be a bipartisan process. There is a lot of work that needs to be done to demonstrate this to my colleagues. There are some ideas on how to fix it, and that’s the purpose of my legislation.