SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Many people might have seen a political ad warning that local news is under siege from "big out-of-state media companies and hedge funds," encouraging people to tell their lawmakers to oppose the California Journalism Preservation Act.
The ad is seemingly everywhere, running prominently through the Olympics, and it's Big Tech's answer to legislation that would require companies like Google and Meta to fund local journalism.
The ad says:
"Our local news keeps us informed when others won’t. But it’s under siege from big, out-of-state media companies and hedge funds. Now California legislators are considering a bill that could make things even worse by subsidizing national and global media corporations while reducing web traffic local papers rely on. So tell lawmakers: Support local journalism, not well-connected media companies. Oppose AB 886. Paid for by CCIA."
Matt Pearce, president of the Media Guild of the West, called it a "very expensive opposition campaign."
Pearce said the law would require massive tech platforms that control the digital advertising market to pay a usage fee to news outlets in exchange for profiting from their journalism.
"These big tech platforms have been competing unfairly. They have taken away too many of the ad dollars that have supported other businesses, like local newsrooms, and those big tech companies need to pay some of that money back to make sure that our local newsrooms can still function," Pearce said.
At a Senate Standing Committee on Judiciary on June 25, Google VP of News Partnerships Jaffer Zaidi spoke out against the bill, saying the company's links to news content are not lucrative.
"The bill would also break the fundamental and foundational principles of the open Internet, forcing platforms to pay publishers for sending valuable free traffic to them which they choose to receive," Zaidi said.
Google said the funds raised under the law could go toward hedge funds with histories of stripping newsrooms for parts, and warned that such a law could cause it to stop linking to news content altogether.
Pearce said he wasn't convinced.
"They are not the journalists themselves saying, hey, the government's about to do something to hurt journalism. These are the people who would be paying for it, and they don't want to pay for it," Pearce said.
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