US lawmakers on August 22 introduced the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which will allow digital news organisations to negotiate collectively and secure fair terms from online platforms like Google and Facebook that regularly access news content without paying for it. “Today, the free press is in economic freefall—especially local news—thanks to the free-riding of dominant online platforms, who seize news content to enrich their platforms but never pay for the labor and investment required to report the news. We would never expect a platform to stream movies without paying a film’s creators. But because Google and Facebook simply take news content for free and have monopolized the digital advertising market, newsrooms today are in dire economic peril—with regional and local news publishers downsizing or shuttering at alarming pace. The moment is urgent. At a time when journalism is more important…
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